Author(s): Frances Greenslade

General Fiction

A spellbinding and wise coming-of-age story from Canadian Frances Greenslade, Shelter draws readers into the precarious world of two young sisters in search of their mother, and brings to life a breathtaking BC landscape.

Maggie is a born worrier who really believes that trouble comes in threes and that threats to her family's cozy but fragile life in Duchess Creek are never far. For reasons she doesn't understand, her father favours her over her carefree older sister, Jenny, and takes her on outings to the bush where he shows her how to build shelters using leaves, sticks and fir boughs. Just in case. When he is killed in a logging accident, Maggie thinks her worst fear has come true, but her father's death is only the first blow in the destruction of her family. Soon her mother, Irene, the one Maggie has never worried about, abruptly drops off her girls in Williams Lake to billet with the gloomy Bea Edwards and her wheelchair-bound husband, Ted.

Irene promises she'll be back for them, but weeks turn to months and then to years. When trouble finds the girls for the third time, it comes for Jenny, who is pitched into a situation too frightening to handle. Maggie decides that it's up to her to find Irene and repair their fractured family. Her quest not only to find but to understand her mother brings the novel to a powerful, wrenching conclusion. Shelter's emotional richness, and Maggie's distinctive voice, invoke the bestselling novels of Miriam Toews and Mary Lawson. Greenslade's prose captures the exquisite beauty of the Chilcotin, the precious comfort of family and the poignant realization that we may never fully understand the people we love.