Lindsey Harding directs the Writing Intensive Program at the University of Georgia, where she earned her PhD in English in 2015. Her recent flash fiction and stories have appeared in Lost Balloon, CRAFT, apt, Spry, and Prick of the Spindle. She lives in Athens, Georgia, with her husband and four children.
Photo Credit: Jamie DeRevere
Pilgrims 2.0
A Novel
Lindsey Harding
PILGRIM, Canterbury Cruise Line’s flagship, promises its passengers not just a luxurious fortnight away but the opportunity for reinvention. This extraordinary journey is made possible by the captain and visionary plastic surgeon Dr. Walter Heston, by the vessel’s self-learning artificial intelligence called BECCA, and an all-male crew of room stewards, deck hands, technicians, and cosmetic practitioners.
Pilgrims 2.0 begins on the eve of Cruise #52 and follows four women eager for transformation. Meet Bianca, the aging athlete determined to resume the competitive tennis career that motherhood sidelined. Meet Nicole, whose mommy makeover will mean she can stop hiding herself, and so much debt, from her husband. Meet Lyla, an infertile maternity-ward nurse desperate to experience pregnancy. And Annalie, who wants only to stop seeing her dead twin every time she looks in the mirror. At the center of the story is Dr. Heston himself, driven to do with bodies what his late wife, Rebecca, could do with computer code—make possible.
But “excursions” like these aren’t always smooth sailing, especially on this voyage, where in the confined space of the cruise ship, the hopes, histories, and obsessions of clients and crew members collide. Some of those who embarked won’t return to the Port of Los Angeles, at least not fully, at least not as themselves, and when a disruptive crewman’s pranks turn dangerous, maybe not with their lives.
PRAISE FOR PILGRIM’S 2.0
Pilgrims 2.0 is satirically sharp, propulsive, and wickedly entertaining. In her marvelous debut, Lindsey Harding expertly manages a large cast of characters and dazzles with her powers of invention. —Chris Bachelder
350 pages | 6 x 9
ISBN (pbk): 978-1-946724-69-4
ISBN (ebook): 978-1-946724-70-0