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Author Kendra Langford Shaw has a new family epic, The Pillagers’ Guide to Arctic Pianos, hitting shelves in May 2026The forthcoming novel follows the Spahrs family, after they settle in the far reaches of the Arctic, and the “unexpected industry that keeps them afloat for generations” Read an exclusive excerpt from the novel here

PEOPLE has an exclusive first look at the new family saga, The Pillagers’ Guide to Arctic Pianos, from author Kendra Langford Shaw. The forthcoming novel will be published next spring by Penguin Random House.

The upcoming epic follows the Spahrs family across generations after they settle, “against all odds, in the far reaches of the Arctic and the unexpected industry that keeps them afloat for generations,” per the book’s official synopsis.

“The Pillagers’ Guide to Arctic Pianos travels through generations, backward to the Spahrs’ homesteader origins and forward to their descendants, eccentrics and optimists all,” the description reads. “An unforgettable and inventive ode to the abiding love of family and pull of home, even as the home we love becomes ever more challenging to inhabit.”

Langford Shaw exclusively tells PEOPLE how her own childhood inspired the novel, explaining that she grew up in Alaska in the early 80s, “when the state boomed with oil money.”

“My father, a music teacher, delivered musical instruments to bush schools and I began this novel imagining one of the float planes he flew in going down,” she says. “What would’ve happened to all those instruments over time? And what if instead of one plane, thousands had met the same fate? How would that have affected the local economy and one family’s ability to navigate peaks and booms over generations?”

“This book is set in the Territory of the Arctic where climate change can no longer be ignored and, like the renovated bed-and-breakfast I grew up in, the Spahr family house is in a constant state of turmoil.”

Read on for an exclusive excerpt from The Pillagers’ Guide to Arctic Pianos.

“The Pillagers’ Guide to Arctic Pianos”.

Camille Gobourg

My little brother, Finley, drowned the first time wrestling the Napoleon pianoforte under the galactic starlight of an Arctic sunset; the way he later told the story, the piano had it coming. Our family had spent the day knee-deep in Disillusionment Bay, gigging beach frogs and slugging fireweed tea. Our parents were up the sand, loose and recumbent, snacking on octopus jerky and reading aloud journal entries my great-great-great-great-grandfather kept as his family traversed the territory to homestead a new life. Beside them on the blanket my little sister, Temperance, sang as she patted black sand into fritters and called to me: “Here’s your pancake, Milda!” It had been a long, dreamy day, I remember: honey in the air and the sharp crick of apples crisping on the trees. Down the beach Madam LeFleur stood on the porch of her boardinghouse beating slugs off a yak wool rug. Floatplanes droned overhead. Deep in the Singing Spruce Forest bear hunters unsnapped their rifles and began the long lope home.

I was sticky with salt and Finley was out too far. He was a strong swimmer for a 9-year-old, but no more than 70 pounds at full stomach. That was nothing against the rip curl. At first I didn’t pay too much attention to him — Finley was always diving after oddities. Always before, he’d resurface within a breath or two, brandishing a tuning fork or an urchin shell. A brand-new trophy to add to his collection in our attic eaves. Earlier that summer he’d spent weeks gathering bones from a dead sea lion, then wired the skeleton together and mounted it in the attic rafters so that it hung over our hammocks. Not long after, we’d rocked to sleep one night while Finley guessed what the lion might’ve eaten for a last meal and if he’d mated for life. Bones don’t tell you that kind of stuff, I said. Ever since then we’d swung to sleep in silence.

Kendra Langford Shaw.

Mary Kate Teske

Finley’s knobby elbows finned the surface as he swam out past the break. The moment before he lost the surface he turned back and called, “Do you see it, Milda?”

I looked beyond him: nothing but breakwater, the surface a lace of algae blooms.

Then my little brother was gone.

Before I registered what was happening — what might have happened, that dark yaw of despair threatening to swallow our family whole — my mother was up and high-kicking against the tide. We, the Spahrs of Jubilation House, were a family of bravado and rosin, heart tattoos along our collarbones, moles tucked into nooks and crannies. My mother, Viola Bloomer — pinochle enthusiast and pilot — drew a great breath and dove after her son, legs butterflying up into a neat pike. A terrible minute passed. Two, then three. Temperance let loose a banshee wail. I felt my father’s hand on my shoulder.

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When they resurfaced I could see right away that something was wrong. Our mother had Finley hooked by the armpits and frog-kicked the pair of them toward shore. Finley’s legs were limp, his head lolled to one side, and our mother’s forehead furrowed to the task as she gulped oxygen and beat the waves with her free arm. All at once they were on the sand, Finley splayed at awkward angles, chest pale and delicate, ribcage like a stack of wishbones. Squatting beside him, our mother beat her fists against his sternum. Tick-tock went Finley’s feet to the rhythm, tick-tock.

“Is that breathing?” my father asked.

Then all at once I found myself braced over my brother, knees and palms grinding into sand, my lips pressed to his — Finley’s dark as huckleberries, mine thin and sun-scabbed. Our buckteeth clinked painfully. A breath and two and three and four and five. Then all at once Finley was up and pushing against my chest, spluttering between us what looked like a gallon of sea bilge. Proteins and lipids and organic clots of fish scales. I thought then that a silverback whale must’ve gotten him. Chomp-chomp. I held out a hand to help lever him to his feet but Finley brushed it aside, slicked back his hair, and looked at me. Irises the color of spruce.

“I was winning,” he said.

Excerpted from THE PILLAGERS’ GUIDE TO ARCTIC PIANOS: A Novel by Kendra Langford Shaw. Reprinted by permission of Pantheon Books, an imprint of the Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group, a division of Penguin Random House LLC. Copyright © 2026 by Kendra Langford Shaw.

The Pillagers’ Guide to Arctic Pianos will be published on May 12 and is now available for preorder, wherever books are sold.