The Other Valley

The Other Valley (2024) is a speculative fiction novel by Scott Alexander Howard. Sixteen-year-old Odile Ozanne lives in a world where time travel is possible, both to the past and the future. Her valley is surrounded by other identical valleys. To the west, time moves backward by exactly 20 years, and to the east, it moves forward. When she sees visitors from the future, she recognizes them as the parents of her classmate, Edme Pira, and knows that he will die soon. At the same time, she enrolls in a vetting program to become a member of the Conseil, the governing body that makes decisions about visitors through time. As Odile grapples with the moral implications of her knowledge and the Conseil’s control of time travel, her journey explores The Burden and Moral Responsibilities of Knowledge, The Lasting Impact of Grief, and Authoritarian Control Versus Individual Freedom.

This guide uses the Kindle edition of the novel.

Content Warning: The source material and guide feature depictions of bullying, physical abuse, domestic violence, child abuse, alcohol dependency, sexual content, death by suicide, child death, illness, and death.

Plot Summary

As 16-year-old Odile starts her last year of school, she is forced to choose an apprenticeship and future profession. Unsure what to do, she follows her mother’s advice and applies for a position in the Conseil’s competitive vetting program. The Conseil is the government body that controls travel in and out of her valley. In Odile’s world, time travel exists by moving to different valleys: To the east, time is 20 years ahead, while it is 20 years behind to the west.

Odile’s teacher, M. Pichegru, tells her to write an essay about which direction she would travel for consideration for the vetting program. She argues against traveling between the valleys at all. She uses her mother’s grief as evidence, citing the fact that her mother has survived the death of her husband without needing to visit him in the past, so others should be able to do the same.

The next day, Odile turns in her essay. However, Pichegru tells her that she failed to answer the question, so she will not be chosen for the program. Upset, Odile flees to the woods behind the school. She finds a makeshift fort and falls asleep, waking up later to the sound of voices. She sees two visitors from a future valley, looking at the school to see their child in the past before they die. The female visitor partially lifts her mask, allowing Odile to recognize her as the mother of her classmate, Edme Pira. When she runs into Edme in the school, he walks her home, but Odile is upset by needing to keep what she saw a secret.

That night, Odile becomes angry at the guilt she now feels. She rewrites her essay, doubling down on her belief that no one should leave the valley and telling Pichegru what she saw. The next day, her essay is inadvertently handed in by Edme’s friend, Alain. Later, Pichegru pulls Odile aside and tells her that she has been chosen for the program with her classmate, Jo. Odile realizes that it must be because she identified Edme’s parents.

Over the next couple of weeks, Odile and Jo participate in the rigorous vetting program. At the same time, Odile becomes closer to Edme, realizing that she is falling in love with him. She helps him play his violin in secret at night on the cliffs above the lake, as his parents do not want him to audition for the orchestra.

Odile and Jo are given real requests from the past of people who wanted to leave the valley. Then, they are forced to decide whether to approve the request and argue in front of the class for their point of view. Although they both survive the first week, Jo is cut from the program after the second, leaving Odile with five others vying for two spots.

After Jo is cut from the program, she becomes bitter toward Odile. One night, Odile and her friends go swimming. Jo arrives with wine and insists that everyone should swim naked. Self-conscious, Odile stays on the beach. When she sees Jo and Edme together in the lake, she becomes jealous and goes home. When Edme does not come to practice his violin the next night, Odile returns his violin on Monday and refuses to speak to him.

On Tuesday, Edme does not come to school. His father comes and tells the class that he is missing. For the rest of the week, search parties look for him. Odile goes to the cliffs and finds his violin and case; she buries them in the dirt and tells no one. On Friday, Edme’s body is found in the lake. Overwhelmed with grief, Odile quits the Conseil vetting program.

Twenty years later, Odile is a gendarme, part of the valley’s military. She is stationed on the eastern border, often taking visitors to the future to see loved ones they wouldn’t normally survive to meet. On one visit with a man named Quinton, he goes to see his granddaughter. However, when she sees them, she waves at them, signaling that she recognizes them despite their masks. Quinton reveals that he told his daughter about his plan, violating the rules of visitations. Odile takes him back to the border and writes a report of what happened. On her way back to the present, she sees the future version of herself, decrepit and serving as the gendarme janitor.

In the present, Odile’s officer friend, Raimond, urges her to apply to become an officer. Realizing that she wants to escape her future, she takes his advice and submits her application. She then spends the next few months doing her patrols of the border.

One night, a woman named Lucie, whom Odile recognizes from her childhood, tries to escape. Odile stops her, and Lucie tells her that she was sent to their valley to get help escaping her abusive husband. Before Odile can learn more, Raimond shoots and kills Lucie. However, Raimond tells their commandant, Jean-Savile, that Odile shot her, earning his praise and putting Odile at the top of the pile for promotion. Odile realizes that her future self sent Lucie to her. She was hoping that Odile would stop her, thereby changing her future.

For Odile’s next patrol, she is sent to the village. She reunites with Alain, Edme’s childhood best friend. After Edme died, Alain dropped out of school and has struggled to find a job since. Alain begs Odile to help him escape to the past to stop Edme’s death, insisting that her life would be better, too, if she had been able to love Edme. Odile refuses his request, insisting that it is illegal. At the same time, she would not be able to help him, as she only guards the eastern border.

When Odile returns to the border, she learns that Jean-Savile will soon decide about the promotion. Just as Odile is sure that she will be promoted, she is called to his office. He informs her that she is being demoted and sent to the western border. Alain told him that they were having sexual relations, something strictly forbidden between a gendarme and a civilian. Upset, Odile confronts Alain. He apologizes but insists that he did it so that she would be in the west to help him escape. She angrily tells him that she had the chance to stop Edme’s death in the past and chose not to do so, devastating Alain.

In the west, Odile is treated as a new recruit. She is forced to cook and clean, while being emotionally abused by the other gendarmes. As the date of Edme’s death approaches, the guards learn that Alain is likely to attempt an escape to the past. Odile is sent between borders with a letter warning the past. Wanting to change her future, she instead escapes through the border and into the past.

Odile goes to her home. She hides in the floorboards, knowing that her past self is at school. The alarms sound and soldiers begin searching for her. She makes her way to the cliffs above the lake where she knows Edme was last seen. As she watches him play his violin, she makes the decision to save him. Suddenly, he falls from the cliff. Odile jumps into the lake after him, rescuing and reviving him.

After saving Edme, Odile flees to the woods above the school to the fort. She finds her past self there. She is overwhelmed by vertigo as she remakes the past, both experiencing the events and having them forged into her memory at the same time. Her past self sees her and yells to the soldiers, alerting them to her presence. She is then shot and killed.

The narration shifts to Odile’s perspective in the past. After she sees her future self die, she is taken to her Conseil teacher in the program, Mme. Ivret. Ivret explains that her future self destroyed her own valley, altering the future by saving Edme. Since Odile knew nothing of the plan and alerted the soldiers, she is not punished and is instead allowed to stay in the Conseil program. Odile is elated to learn that Edme survived.

The next day, Odile goes to Edme’s house. Although Edme’s parents won’t let her see him, Alain tells her that she can sneak around back to his bedroom window. Odile goes up to it and sees Edme inside, bandaged and resting in his bed. Edme greets her happily and motions to her to open his bedroom window.