Light, humourous and poignant, this first novel is a coming-of-middle-age story for Shinny as she settles in to being an unlikely matriarch for her family.

Mary Burns grew up near Chicago and emigrated to Canada during the Vietnam War years. A former journalist and documentary filmmaker, she is the author of several stage plays, numerous radio plays and seven books, including the Literary Press Group’s Writer’s Choice, Suburbs of the Arctic Circle, and The Private Eye: Observing Snow Geese, shortlisted for the Science in Society Book award. Talon published her collection of short stories, Shinny’s Girls, and a trilogy of novellas, Centre/Center. Her most recent novel is The Reason for Time, historical fiction set in the turbulent “Red Summer” of 1919 in Chicago, and listed as a “Must Read” Chicago book. For twelve years she served as chair of Creative Writing at Douglas College where she taught fiction, play writing and personal narrative. She now lives on the Sunshine Coast of B.C. and spends regular time each year in Quebec City.

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