This Side of Bonkers explores the lives of women; mothers, sisters, daughters and reveals and revels in how each woman treads the fine line between normal and maladjusted.An aging stripper explores her childhood with her sister, hoping to find a dark secret to explain why she chose to live her life as she has. A woman tries to recover from a divorce by shutting herself away from the world in a remote cabin, but the world, it seems, has its own agenda for helping her deal with her pain. A lounge singer returns to her home town during a tour and makes an unplanned visit to her best friend from high school, who is locked away in a psychiatric hospital, and she comes away disturbed by their similar emotional states. After her financial shenanigans are uncovered, an advertising executive flees to the woods and becomes the reluctant campfire companion of an escapee from a juvenile detention centre.This Side of Bonkers peels back the emotional lives of characters trying to fight through, or crawl away, from consequences of their actions and the unwelcome changes ahead.

Jumping Off is Laura Cutlers second published collection of short stories. Her first, Out of Her Backpack, was released last year by Coteau Books. Cutlers stories have also been published in anthologies, including the North (Vancouver) Shore Writers Association Millennium Anthology, and the Indigo Books/Henkell Trocken What the Henkell Happened Here. She has traveled on six continents, and has had careers as a hotel manager and an RCMP officer. Cutler currently lives in Calgary, Alberta, where she teaches English as a Second Language and writes.

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