Francie's Got a Gun

By: Carrie Snyder

Narrated by: Carrie Snyder

Length: 11 hrs and 6 mins

Publisher's summary

ONE OF CBC'S BEST CANADIAN FICTION BOOKS OF 2022

A suspenseful and poignant tale from an award-winning writer about a girl navigating chaotic family life in a close-knit small town.

On a June afternoon in a small city, a wild-eyed girl named Francie dashes down a neighborhood street, clutching a gun. She doesn’t know exactly what she’s running from, and she doesn’t know what she’s heading towards. All she understands is the need to survive. To save herself, she has no choice but to run—and to save those she loves, she must hold tight to that gun.

Swirling around Francie is a chorus of friends, family, and neighbors, each person with a different view of her. As we hear from these voices—Francie’s steadfast best friend, Alice; Alice’s comically unaware mother, Sally, and struggling mathematician father, David; Francie’s distressed and distracted mother, Marietta, and troubled, unwell father, Luce—a fractured portrait emerges of the girl and the village surrounding her. And at last we arrive at a still point in the chaos: a tall tree where Francie takes shelter, and where the meaning of her flight—for herself, and for the people around her—becomes clear.

In Francie’s Got a Gun, award-winning writer Carrie Snyder assembles a chorus of unforgettable characters who are both well-intentioned and flawed. At their centre is Francie, a vulnerable, imaginative girl with surprising attachments to each of them. Here is a propulsive, polyphonic, heart-expanding novel—equal parts sorrow and humour, fear and love, anger and kindness—about social breakdown and the quest for connection in a close-knit community.

©2022 Carrie Snyder (P)2022 Knopf Canada

Critic reviews

“Francie’s Got a Gun is a tender, pulsating novel about a girl and a supporting cast of characters drawn with such complexity and rawness you feel as though you are inhabiting not only their worlds but their living, breathing bodies. Carrie Snyder has—by some miracle—succeeded in writing a novel that has its own heartbeat.” —Tasneem Jamal, author of Where the Air is Sweet

“I loved every character in Carrie Snyder’s compelling new novel, Francie’s Got a Gun. In beautiful prose, Snyder unfurls Francie’s story through a chorus of perspectives, illuminating the hopes, flaws, disappointments, small preferences and large ambitions within a community. Together these voices propel the narrative toward a devastating, beautiful, and pitch-perfect conclusion. Carrie Snyder has pulled off a magic trick with this novel—it is a literary feat.” —Emily Urquhart, bestselling author of Beyond the Pale 

“At once tense and tragic, sweet and tender . . . [Francie’s Got a Gun] is a strong, complex novel, with a myriad of layers that elevate [it] to a timeless novel.” —The Miramichi Reader