David Watmough’s Geraldine celebrates a groundbreaking female scientist, seen in her later years. After a hard-fought successful career as a bio-chemist and professor, the sharp-mouthed Geraldine struggles to keep her dignity and independence as her family casts her in the role of doddering old woman. Alone in a Vancouver highrise, Geraldine hits the bottle, reflecting upon her childhood in Victoria and her determination to become a scientist despite the attitudes of the day. If she has become hard, it is because she needed to be in order to succeed in the patriarchal world of medical science. Now she battles her physician son, who considers his mother an embarrassment. With few peers left to remember her former stature, Geraldine takes an interest in her grandson, a young gay man. A rewarding relationship develops between the aging feminst and the confused youth. David Watmough’s tribute to the feminists of the twentieth century is written with humour, warmth and style. The reader rejoices at Geraldine’s accomplishments and suffers her anguish and humiliation as old age robs her of the respect she struggled to achieve.

David Watmough is the author of a cycle of fictions that features gay "everyman" Davey Bryant, who has appeared in twelve volumes, including No More into the Garden (1978), Unruly Skeletons (1982), The Year of Fears (1987), The Time of Kingfishers (1994), and Hunting With Diana (1996). Watmough is also a playwright, short-story writer, critic, broadcaster, and the author of nine other books. His novel Thy Mother's Glass (1992) was nominated in 2002 for CBC's Canada Reads. He lives in Vancouver.

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