A stunning debut collection of linked short stories exploring the promises and disappointments of modern life, edited by award-winning author Alexander MacLeod.

These are the stories of the people who used to live next-door.

The characters in Sue Murtagh’s outstanding debut collection of linked short stories are at a crossroads. Middle-class, middling, they wrestle with the consequences of their decisions and powerful forces outside of their control. Whether it’s a volatile housing market, the ever-present threat of illness, or the slow disintegration of a marriage, this community of neighbours finds themselves trapped between the idyllic promises of the North American dream and the stark realities of modern life.

Mice infest every home a woman has ever lived in, no matter the domestic trappings. A charity golf tournament is an exercise in futility for a pair of married insurance entrepreneurs. At a community pool, profound grief manifests as rage. A grandmother’s stories of generational trauma mutate in the retelling. And a suburban wildfire causes a young person to question the idea of home and the values of her parents’ generation.

Packing the punch of a novel, these thirteen deftly interwoven stories scrutinize the lives of everyday people with surgical precision, while finding connection and community in the unlikeliest of places. Edited by award-winning author Alexander MacLeod, We’re Not Rich is a wryly observed and deeply thoughtful collection, where nothing is quite as it should be, but everything feels true.

Sue Murtagh lives in Halifax. Her writing has appeared in The Nashwaak Review, Grain, carte blanche, the Humber Literary Review, and The New Quarterly. She won the Budge Wilson Short Story Prize in 2016. In 2020, she apprenticed with Alexander MacLeod through the WFNS Alistair MacLeod mentorship program. She then graduated with distinction in 2022 from the Humber School of Writers, working with Danila Botha. We're Not Rich is her first book.

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