Northodox Press signs Rachel Canwell’s ‘powerful’ novel inspired by a forgotten hospital
Northodox Press has signed Rachel Canwell’s historical novel Paper Sisters, about three sisters in 1914 with a backdrop of the Lincolnshire Fens.
Publisher Ted O’Connor acquired UK and Commonwealth excluding Canada rights from Jemma McDonagh at Jemma McDonagh Agency for publication in February 2026.
The novel follows three women and one deserted hospital on the edge of the marsh. All trapped by the past and its dark obligations. A hospital built to serve the Port that fell. A hospital that has never had a patient.
The women are Eleanor, torn between her love for the local blacksmith and her strange and unsettling sister; Lily, whose grief for the past has morphed into something far more sinister and will prevent her sister’s marriage no matter what the cost; and Clara, married into the family. Bullied and abused by her husband, and desperately looking for a way out. "When the country finds itself in the grip of war, the world is turned on its head, and changes more far-reaching than anyone could ever imagine," the description reads.
Canwell said: "I grew up with the story of this forgotten hospital. Isolated, stocked weekly and cleaned daily but never admitting a single patient. The hospital was real, tended by my family for over 60 years and along with the ethereal beauty and loneliness of the Fenland landscape, is the inspiration for my novel. It is a dream come to true to send this story out into the world."
O’Connor added: "Paper Sisters is a powerful, dark and thoughtful novel that is focused on an aspect of war we don’t often see covered in contemporary fiction: the realities of women picking up the pieces left behind by the horrors the soldiers had to endure. It’s brave, it’s beautiful, and it’s incredibly prescient for the events occurring worldwide at present."
