In these seamlessly interwoven stories Linda Svendsen charts with tenderness and devastating accuracy the longings, pleasures, and terrors of belonging to a family. Through the watchful and sometimes astonished eyes of Adele Nordstrom, we see her chaotic working-class home in Vancouver: her mother, June, a cocktail pianist who never stops believing in the redemptive power of another marriage, and who soothes a frightened daughter by playing "Away in a Manger" on her back; and her brother Ray, the roving charmer. And there's Adele herself, who as a child will look unsparingly at the failures of her elders, and as a grownup will find herself helplessly repeating them

Linda Svendsen’s stories have appeared in many short story anthologies and magazines such as Saturday Night and The Atlantic. She has been cited three times for Distinguished Short Story in Best American Stories and has appeared three times in Best Canadian Stories. An award-winning screenwriter, she has adapted The Sue Rodriguez Story and Margaret Laurence’s The Diviners for television. She is an associate professor in the Creative Writing Program at UBC and lives with her partner, Brian McKeown, and their family in Vancouver.

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