Showing results by narrator "Amy Rutherford" in All Categories

Days after being dumped by her boyfriend Marc in Paris - "he was heading off to an ashram and said we could communicate telepathically" - Hattie hears her sister Min has been checked into a psychiatric hospital, and finds herself flying back to Winnipeg to take care of Thebes and Logan, her niece and nephew. Not knowing what else to do, they set out on a road trip in search of the children's long-lost father, Cherkis. On their wayward journey, the Troutmans stay at scary motels, meet helpful hippies, and try to ignore the threatening noises coming from under the hood of their van.

After a sudden, devastating loss, Mara flees her family to find solace elsewhere. She lands in a wealthy seaside town, steeped in both her grief and the fear that this tragedy was the inevitable result of her own destructive tendencies. Deeply detached, Mara spends the first days of her self-imposed exile scrounging for food and drinking on the beach at night. With nothing to tether her, she feels herself fading away, a hollowed-out shell. She eventually finds herself working at a local wine and cheese shop, nursing a burgeoning drinking problem and without a sanctioned place to stay.

Nineteen-year-old Irma Voth lives in a Mennonite community in northern Mexico, surrounded by desert and both physically and culturally isolated from the surrounding towns and cities. It’s been six years since her family left Canada to escape the prying eyes of the government and preserve their religious freedom, but Irma still misses the minor freedoms she had in their small town.

This inspiring, compelling debut memoir chronicles the experiences of a female captain serving in the Canadian Armed Forces, and her journey to make space for herself in a traditionally masculine world. Girls Need Not Apply is a refreshingly honest story of conviction, determination, and empowerment, and a bit of a love story, too. 

Lucy Van Alstyne always thought she’d grow up to become a forest ranger. Instead, at the age of 18, she’s found herself with quite a different job title: single mother on the dole. As for the father of her nine-month-old son, Dillinger, well...it could be any of number of guys. At the Have-a-Life housing project, Lucy meets Lish, a zany and exuberant woman. In the middle of a mosquito-infested rainy season, Lish and Lucy decide to escape the craziness of Have-a-Life by taking to the road in a van held together with coat-hangers and electrical tape in search of Lish’s lost love....

After a sudden, devastating loss, Mara flees her family and ends up adrift in a wealthy coastal town. Mired in her grief, Mara's first few days are spent alone, surviving on what scraps of food she can find and swimming at night in the ocean. When her money runs out and the tourist season comes to a close, Mara finds a job in a local wine store and meets its owner, Simon, a man whose loneliness she immediately recognises as a mirror to her own. As Mara dances around her growing attraction to Simon, she is forced to reckon with both her present desires and her past errors.

After a sudden, devastating loss, Mara flees her family and ends up adrift in a wealthy seaside town with a dead cellphone and barely any money. Mired in her grief, Mara detaches from the outside world and spends her days of self-imposed exile scrounging for food and swimming in the night ocean. In her state of emotional extremis, the sea at the town's edge is rendered bleak, luminous, implacable.