Hope

by Sommer Schafer

Set in a small island community in Hope, Alaska, this fresh and contemporary novel-in-stories explores the lives of a host of quirky town characters striving for freedom, meaning, and utopia in a wilderness of startling beauty and danger. Through these entangled lives, HOPE poses an essential question: To what extent can we, should we, bury the past?

226 pages, Paperback

Published November 25, 2025

About the author

Sommer Schafer is senior editor of The Forge Literary Magazine and widely published, including a Distinguished Story in Best American Short Stories 2019. She lives in Northern California on Coast Miwok land with her family, a rescue dove, and a bearded dragon.

Reviews

[Elisabeth Schafer · Rating 4 out of 5]

If you are looking for a bucolic and idyllic read about a small island town, this book isn’t for you. However if you like witches, ghosts, murder, Bear encounters, dysfunctional city assembly, then this entertaining, slightly alarming read about this community’s underbelly is a must read. The narrator brings these stories to a nice close with her thoughts on leaving Hope for good after her reminisces during her last visit to Hope, Alaska.