Release Date: March 3, 2026
Size: 6x9
Paperback ISBN: 978-1-57869-215-6
eBook ISBN: coming soon
Library of Congress Control Number: coming soon
Booksellers and Libraries: Order Info Here or at Ingram.

Synopsis

Raised by absent-minded professors in Cambridge, Massachusetts, Freya is a young neurodivergent woman occupied since childhood by a series of obsessions. She is artistic, vegan, unsocial, and utterly honest. She attends college in the Pacific Northwest, planning to create her own major so she can explore exactly what the soul is. There she falls in love with handsome Caleb, who becomes her new obsession. When Caleb becomes increasingly radicalized after the hideous murder of George Floyd, she must choose between her intense loyalty to him and her moral doubts about violent protest. 

From screenwriter Meg Richman comes a quirky, lyrical debut coming-of-age tale about a complex character curious about the numinous yet tied to a physical world that’s steeped in political upheaval.

Praise

“An unlikely stunner! Freya the Deer comes across as a modern-day Grimm’s tale read beneath a strobe light. Richman’s self-possessed prose ensures that readers will face only their own judgments/opinions of autistic teens, Jewish ethics, contemporary paganism, and the Black Lives Matter movement in this important work.”

—Stacey Levine, author of Mice 1961, American Book Award winner and Pulitzer Prize finalist

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“Meg Richman’s gorgeous, enticing prose is a siren calling us to a messy intersection of blind love, political righteousness, and uncompromising morality. Freya the Deer is a joy to read and a tantalizing knot I’ll be untying for a long, long time.” 

—Patrick Flores-Scott, author of American Road Trip and No Going Back

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“Meg Richman’s Freya the Deer introduces us to the unforgettable Freya, an atypical girl who, while on a quest to discover proof of the soul's existence, experiences the world in unusual and sometimes fantastical ways. A socially-conscious fairytale, Richman’s poignant and sometimes heartbreaking coming-of-age novel is a testament to the limitless boundaries of love.”

—Zeeva Bukai, author of The Anatomy of Exile

MeET THE AUTHOR

Meg Richman wrote and directed Under Heaven (1998), which premiered at the Sundance Film Festival. She is a retired English teacher who lives with her son and gentle giant of a dog in Seattle.