My new novel, Lake Burntshore, comes out on April 22, 2025!
A funny and emotionally resonant coming-of-age novel about one summer of momentous social and political change at a Jewish sleepover camp
It’s the summer of 2013 and 21-year-old Ruby, a counselor at Camp Burntshore, can’t wait to supervise a rowdy cabin of 11-year-olds, smoke weed by the fire, and argue about which city make the best bagels. But when Brent, the camp owner’s son, hires Israeli soldiers to deal with a staffing shortfall, Ruby, a committed anti-Zionist, must decide if she’s willing to jeopardize her place at Burntshore to fight Brent over the contentious issues of Jewish belonging and settler colonialism, even as she finds herself falling in love with one of the soldiers, the sweetly handsome Etai.
Soon it becomes clear that the conflict is not just about the camp’s internal divisions but also about Burntshore’s relationship with the neighboring Black Spruce First Nation, strained because of Brent’s larger scheme to buy the Crown land surrounding the lake. As campers swim, go canoe tripping, and stage an over-the-top musical, Ruby has to contend with her feelings for Etai while simultaneously trying to save her beloved camp from greed and colonialism. A social satire, romance, and political commentary all in one, Lake Burntshore celebrates the contemporary Jewish world through its most iconic symbol — the often idyllic yet always dramatic summer camp.
Available for pre-order at ECW Press, bookshop.org if you're in America, and wherever you get your books!
Advanced Praise:
“Funny, frank, and sexy, Lake Burntshore is a richly felt examination of the Jewish diaspora. Aaron Kreuter’s storytelling will transport you to your coziest, most carefree memories while also holding up a mirror to the adult you’ve become. This story really is a summer to remember.” — Gabe Liedman, writer and comedian
“Lake Burntshore is a summer camp story like no other. Ambitious in theme and impressively effective in narrative, this novel brilliantly unpacks the extensive, harmful impacts of colonialism with nuance and care. From Palestine to Ontario cottage country, Aaron Kreuter deftly gives agency to, and celebrates the humanity of, the people of the land. To anyone in a diaspora that’s struggled under oppression for generations, this story hits very close to home. By honouring the land and the people fighting for recognition and justice, Lake Burntshore is both timely and timeless.” — Waubgeshig Rice, author of Moon of the Crusted Snow
"Lake Burntshore hooks you from the beginning. Aaron Kreuter is unafraid to examine our views of displacement and genocide and our relationship with the land. A must-read!” — Christina Wong, author of Denison Avenue
Rubble Children is Out Now!
In seven-and-a-half interlinked stories, Aaron Kreuter’s Rubble Children tackles Jewish belonging, settler colonialism, Zionism and anti-Zionism, love requited and unrequited, and cannabis culture, all drenched in suburban wonder and dread. Sometimes realist, often satirical, and with a dash of the speculative, the book introduces readers to a startling world of character and place, a world which orbits Kol B'Seder, a fictional Reform synagogue in the Toronto suburb of Thornhill. In these stories, the locked basement room in the home of the synagogue’s de facto patriarch opens onto a life-altering windfall. A retiree walks the suburban streets, wracked with uncertainty whether he should vote to include a Palestinian scholar in Kol B’Seder’s upcoming speaker series. Teens stay up all night at a youth “shul-in,” navigating hormones, drugs, and nightmares of the third temple. Reliving the same day over and over again, a couple reckons with both the end of their relationship and a series of ever-changing permutations of Israel/Palestine. In the story that gives the collection its name, a group of Jewish girls obsessed with the Holocaust discover that they are far from the only people who live in the rubble of history. Engaging, funny, dark, surprising, Rubble Children is a scream of Jewish rage, a smoky exhalation of Jewish joy, a vivid dream of better worlds.
Included on 49th Shelf's Most Anticipated Fiction list.
Order now at Chapters, Amazon, Bookshop.org if you're in the states, or wherever you buy your books!
Advanced Praise:
"What if the worldview you were raised in turns out to be monstrous? In the stories that form Rubble Children, Aaron Kreuter examines a Jewish community in flux, caught between its historical fealty to Israel and a growing awakening and resistance to it. Rubble Children is a book of great range: at once political, communitarian, empathetic, funny, revolutionary, touching, and hopeful. This is a work that is essential for our moment." – Saeed Teebi, author of Her First Palestinian
"A solid and provocative collection that needles all the contradictions in one Jewish community north of Toronto. The story "Rubble Children" is jam-packed with scrappiness, turmoil and revelation." – Tamara Faith Berger, author of Yara
“The stories simultaneously ground themselves in the immediate, lived experience of the Jewish community in Toronto and leap beyond it into possible futures, following flights of imagination that curl back on the present, revealing its hidden dimensions. Rubble Children breaks what is essentially new ground for the Canadian short story. Urgent, topical, and contemporary, it makes for genuinely exhilarating reading.” —Aaron Schneider, author of The Supply Chain
