Unless

Reta Winters leads a picture perfect life. She is a successful romance writer, she has three wonderful daughters, a good-looking husband, a house in the country and a dog named Pet. Everything seems wonderful, until her eldest daughter inexplicably drops out of university to panhandle on the streets of Toronto. As Reta watches helplessly, Norah sits mute on the corner of Bathurst and Bloor, with a sign around her neck that reads “Goodness.” Like the novel, this moving full-cast dramatization by Susan Coyne circles back and forth over Reta’s recent past as she frantically tries to understand what unhinged her daughter. All the while, she shows the world that she is fine by meeting friends for coffee, keeping up the house and the family routine, and working on the sequel to her best-selling first novel, as she tries to recover the rhythms of her happy former happy life — even if nothing seems sure anymore. Unless was the last novel Carol Shields published before her death. It was originally published as a hardcover by Random House in 2002 and appeared as a Vintage paperback in 2003. Unless was shortlisted for Britain’s Booker Prize, the Commonwealth Prize, the Giller Prize, and the Governor General’s Award.