Emerald Lake
A novella by Daniel Nearing

In 1977, two brothers raised in foster care in Calgary take a reckless drive into the Canadian Rockies with an eleven-year-old girl who has sought them out for reasons she won't yet explain. What begins as a favor for cash becomes a journey toward a family history neither brother was ready to face — one narrated a half-century later by the younger brother, now an elderly man in Chicago, piecing together what he witnessed, what he was told, and what he can only imagine.

Written in a spare, Hemingway-inflected prose style, Emerald Lake moves between a single unforgettable road trip and the weight of memory that follows it for decades — mothers lost to addiction and grief, brothers bound by loyalty and rage, and a mountain lake that holds the story's quiet, devastating center.

Emerald Lake originated as a screenplay before Daniel Nearing reworked it into this novella form in 2026. A companion film adaptation is anticipated in 2027.

About the author: Daniel Nearing is a Chicago-based filmmaker, educator, and Guggenheim and MacDowell Fellow. He was the inaugural Filmmaker in Residence for the City of Chicago and was named the Chicago Tribune's Chicagoan of the Year for Film. He studied under Northrop Frye and Michael Ondaatje at the University of Toronto and holds an MFA from York University.