Morgan Turner's grief over her sister's brutal murder has become a rut, an everyday horror she is caught in along with her estranged parents and chilly older brother. In search of a way out, she delves the depths of a factory abattoir, classic horror cinema, and the Canadian criminal justice system, as it tries her sister's killer and former lover, who is arguing that he is "Not Criminally Responsible? for his actions because of mental illness. Whatever the verdict, Morgan -- with the help of her immigrant coworkers, a do-gooder, and a lovelorn schizophrenia patient -- uncovers her own way to move on.

Jennifer Quist was born in northern mainland British Columbia and raised all over Maritime and Western Canada, the eldest daughter in a close family of seven children. She has a BA at the University of Alberta with first class Honours in Sociology and has worked with Alberta First Nations, as a freelance researcher, a reporter, and columnist. In 2012 her “Fish Story” was nominated for the Writers' Guild of Alberta’s Howard O’Hagan Award. Her fiction is published in Filling Station, in NorthWord and in The 40 Below Project (forthcoming November 2013), her poetry in The Prairie Journal, commentary in The Globe and Mail and The National Post, essays in Maclean’s, Today’s Parent, and Alberta Oil, and she has written and voiced introspective personal essays for CBC Radio One’s Definitely Not the Opera and Tapestry. Love Letters of the Angels of Death is her first novel. Author website: www.jenniferquist.com.

Jennifer Quist's profile page

"The originality of this novel about grief, loss, mental illness and justice is that you feel the pain and laugh out loud. There are no glancing characters here. You see inside everyone. Central character, Morgan, is a memorable masterpiece." -- Fred Stenson