She’s depressed, they say. Apathetic. Bridget Murphy, almost eighteen, has had it with her zany family. When she is transferred to the psych ward after giving birth and putting her baby up for adoption, it is a welcome relief — even with the manic ranting of a teen stripper and come-ons of another delusional inmate. But this oasis of relative calm is short-lived. Christmas is coming, and Uncle Albert arrives to whisk her back to the bedlam of home and the booze-soaked social life that got her into trouble in the first place. Her grandmother raves from her bed, banging the wall with a bedpan through a litany of profanities. Her father curses while her mother tries to keep the lid on developmentally delayed Uncle Rollie. The baby’s father wants to sue her, and her friends don’t get that she’s changed.
Lynn Coady is the author of the bestselling novel The Antagonist, which was a finalist for the Scotiabank Giller Prize, as well as the novels Mean Boy, Saints of Big Harbour, and Strange Heaven and the short story collection Play the Monster Blind. She has been shortlisted for the Governor General’s Literary Award and the Stephen Leacock Medal for Humour, and has four times made the Globe and Mail’s annual list of Top 100 Books. Originally from Cape Breton, she now lives in Edmonton, Alberta, where she is a founding and senior editor of the award-winning magazine Eighteen Bridges.
Marina Endicott’s second novel, Good to a Fault, was winner of the regional Commonwealth Writers’ Prize Best Book Award, Canada and the Caribbean, a finalist for the Scotiabank Giller Prize, and one of The Globe and Mail’s Top 100 Books of 2008. Her debut novel, Open Arms, was a finalist for the 2001 Amazon/Books in Canada First Novel Award and broadcast on CBC Radio’s Between the Covers. Endicott’s stories have been featured in Coming Attractions and shortlisted for the Journey Prize and the Western Magazine Awards. She was born in Golden, BC and grew up in Vancouver, Nova Scotia and Toronto. She has been an actor, director, playwright and editor, and was Dramaturge of the Saskatchewan Playwrights Centre for many years. She lives in Edmonton.
