Author Spotlight: Barbara Gowdy

The farthest place you can go is closer than you can imagine.

Rose is a sensible woman, thirty-four years old. Together with her widowed mother, Fiona, she runs a small repertory cinema in a big city. Fiona is in the early stages of dementia and is beginning to make painful references to Rose’s sister, Ava, who died young in an accident.

It is high summer, and a band of storms, unusual for their frequency and heavy downpour, is rolling across the city. Something unusual is also happening to Ros …

For lovers of literary fiction, The Romantic is Barbara Gowdy’s utterly absorbing tale of love, longing, and loss. It is the story of Louise, whose former beautyqueen mother disappears one day, leaving a note that reads only—and incorrectly—“Louise knows how to work the washing machine.” Louise promptly falls passionately in love with Mrs. Richter, the new neighbor, and then with Abel, Mrs. Richter’s nature-loving, enigmatic son. Despite the fact that Abel moves away, Louise becomes …

If elephants could tell just one story, it would be the story of Mud, a young elephant cow orphaned at birth and blessed with visionary powers. Mud’s life on the African plain is changed forever when she and her adopted family are forced by prolonged drought to linger at one of the few remaining watering holes. The herd is ambushed there by ivory poachers, who kill almost all the cows and their young. The traumatized survivors, including a pregnant Mud, set out in search of the talismanic whit …

Celia is the single mother of an exceptionally beautiful child: nine-year-old Rachel. All too aware of the precarious balance of the life she has built for the two of them, Celia worries about her daughter’s longing for the father she has never met. When Rachel disappears one night during a blackout, Celia is stricken with guilt and terror. But her desperation is only half the story as Ron, the man who has taken Rachel, struggles with feelings that are at once tender, misguided and chillingly …