Bill Chambers has come home from the second World War with several fingers of his right hand missing but with his will to restore his family life intact. He wants the best for his wife,Sylvia, and his children, Patrick, Paul and Daphne, and with his steady job at the hardware store, the future stretches out before him. so opens Bonnie Burnard’s brilliant, superbly crafted novel about three generations of an ordinary small-town family from the 1950s to the 1990s. As the family members spread out from their community into the larger world, the bonds deepen, widen and sometimes fray. Loyalties are tested by time and chance, people resort to necessary, self-preserving lies, and love creates its own snares.
About the Author
BONNIE BURNARD is the author of two novels and two short story collections. Her first story collection, Women of Influence, won the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize for Best First Book. Casino & Other Stories was shortlisted for the inaugural Giller Prize and won the Saskatchewan Book of the Year Award. Her first novel, A Good House, won the Giller Prize and the CBA People’s Choice Award and was published around the world in many languages. Her second novel, Suddenly, was a Globe and Mail Book of the Year, praised by critics as “a smart, consuming read” (Toronto Star) and “an unassuming masterpiece” (The Globe and Mail). A recipient of the Marian Engel Award, Bonnie Burnard lives in London, Ontario.
