Judith Love is a gifted storyteller. In
this compelling and thought-provoking novel with its skillfully
interwoven plots, she takes the reader on journeys within Canada,
Britain and Southern Africa. The author’s acute sense of time and
place and well-drawn characters, combine to make this a book that is
hard to put down.
Rosalind Halvorsen. Montreal, 2012
It is the Fall of 2008. Maggie Stanton,
a widowed mother with a part-time job at Queen’s University in
Kingston, Ontario, finds herself at a watershed in her life. Earlier,
her husband’s profession had taken the family around the world,
with repercussions for Maggie’s career and the upbringing of their
children. While now contemplating her own future she is unexpectedly
caught up in the complex relationships of her son and daughter, both
in their mid-twenties.
Originally on a whim, Maggie has traced
the life of her own great-grandmother, Emilie Jane McNiven, who had a
root in the Huron community of Wendake, Quebec. With some time on her
hands, Maggie writes a fictionalized biography of Emilie whose life
lends an historical counter point to the life of Maggie and her
family.
Events transpire to take Maggie to the
African continent. When she returns home and watches her son and
daughter leave to follow their own paths she finally confronts her
future.
The story is predominantly about
relationships, present day and historical, and it is these
relationships that allow the writer and reader to explore such
subjects as cultural pluralism, religious diversity, language, and
roots -- subjects at the heart of Canada. 367 pages $24.95
