No wonder the university administration is worried: a fatal hit and run in the parking lot; a woman jogger drowned in the river. Accidents? Perhaps. But the latest campus death is no accident – and suicides don’t stab themselves several times and then cover themselves up with a raincoat.

Despite warnings from her husband and the police, Rosalie Cairnes feels only she can untangle the threads that will lead to the motive and the murderer. And as she nears the truth, her own life is increasingly in danger.

Child abuse, the crossfire of radicals and reactionaries on campus, and violence towards women are just some of the ingredients in this fast-paced, tightly plotted and beautifully written novel.

Betsy Struthers has published eight books of poetry, including Still (Black Moss Press), winner of the 2004 Pat Lowther Memorial Award for the best book of poetry by a Canadian woman, and three novels as well as co-editing an anthology of essays about teaching poetry. Her first book of short stories, Relay: Short Fictions, was also published by Black Moss Press.Struthers received the Silver Medal as runner-up for the Milton Acorn People’s Poetry Award in 1994 and was short-listed for the Arthur Ellis Best First Novel Award in 1993 and the CBC Literary Awards in 2006. A past president of the League of Canadian Poets, she has read her work from coast to coast in Canada, in Australia, and in North Carolina, including the Sleeping Giant Literary Festival in Thunder Bay, the Spring Pulse Poetry Festival in Cobalt, Ontario, and the Labrador Creative Arts Festival in Happy Valley/Goose Bay. Her poems and fiction have been published in many anthologies (most recently, In Fine Form: The Canadian Book of Form Poetry and Going Top Shelf: An Anthology of Canadian Hockey Poetry) and literary journals; she has taught workshops in both poetry and fiction to students of all ages from kindergarten to adults. Resident in Peterborough since 1977, Struthers works as a freelance editor of academic texts.

Betsy Struthers' profile page