Through the braided narratives of three spirited characters, this novel bears witness to the infamous “American” crime that metastasized uber-civilized Montreal. Everyone wants a Marin at her party. Bohemian and beautiful, this engineering student is as passionate about constructing sets for theater and opera as she is about Trey, the one man she can finally trust. Deirdre is a first year engineering major, earnest and perceptive, but too naïve to know that frat boys can be dangerous. Montreal columnist Jenean is feisty and urbane, a feminist who longs for peace between the sexes even as she ponders splitting from her live-in partner. In the face of startling and heartbreaking tragedy, we witness fierce love and bonding. This is not your everyday love story. The Montreal Massacre is lodged in Canadian memory: on December 6, 1989, fourteen female engineering students were murdered in their classroom. Set in that tragic historical moment, on two college campuses fraught with gendered antagonisms, this novel follows the imagined lives of women as they happen headlong into the December 6 tragedy. Were In Cold Blood to marry The Poisonwood Bible, this novel would be their progeny: a story disarmingly accurate and bountifully probing that explores the profundity of deepest love and unimaginable loss.

Donna Decker is Professor of English, co-founder of the Women in Leadership Program at Franklin Pierce University, and creator of a seminar on school shootings. A Ms. Magazine Feminist Scholar and blogger, she is the mother of three children and lives in Ashburnham, Massachusetts, USA.

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