Set in a small town in Quebec, Running Downhill Like Water consists of four interconnected stories spanning fifty years of the lives of people whose ­prospects have been violently shattered. Lucy, a perennial misfit, is thwarted in her desperate hope for love and belonging; Sheila, a classical violinist, fails miserably in both her career and as a mother; and brothers Evan and Neil, ­struggling with the disastrous fallout of a rigid fundamentalist upbringing, endure not only severe mental illness but catastrophic crises of faith. Running on quicksand, keeping small hopes aloft on faint breath, these four misfits move in and out of one another’s lives, somehow managing to drag themselves kicking and screaming to that place of acceptance and hard-won peace hiding in the deepest heart of failure, weakness and humility.

Author of The Walking Tanteek, Jane Woods spent a decade working in Canadian regional theatre before settling in Montreal to work as a voice actress. Later, she began translating and adapting French-language films and television series to be dubbed into English. She lives in Toronto, where she continues to work as a translator. Running Downhill Like Water is her second novel.

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