It’s 1968 and Min is planning her 90th birthday party. Half the Connar clan isn’t speaking to the other half and the town is filled with eccentric characters whose secret and public histories are interwoven with each other and with the history of the town. Better Than Life celebrates all the blessings and bruisings of blood ties, and explores the emotional misfires that can hamper the most precious of human connections with poignancy and wry humour.

Margaret Gunning’s experience in print journalism includes hundreds of columns and book reviews in such publications as the Globe &Mail, Vancouver Sun, Victoria Times-Colonist and Montreal Gazette. Her poems have appeared in Prism International, Room of One’s Own, Capilano Review and many others. Margaret’s first novel (Better Than Life), described by the Edmonton Journal as “fiction at its finest”, celebrates the joy and anguish of family in small-town Ontario. Her second novel (Mallory) explores issues of bullying and social ostracism. Gunning currently lives in Coquitlam, BC.

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