In Niagara of the 1960s, a mysterious proxy bride arrives from Italy to marry a candy shop owner with crime connections, only to fall in love with her proxy husband’s teenaged son. Part fairy tale, part gritty realism, The Proxy Bride explores the underbelly of a southern Ontario community steeped in gambling, smuggling and pornography.

Terri Favro has been a winner and a shortlisted finalist in numerous literary competitions, including the CBC Creative Non-fiction Prize. Her work has appeared in numerous anthologies including Clockwork Canada, a Canadian Steampunk story collection. In 2014, she won the Accenti Magazine Award for short fiction, awarded at Montreal's Blue Metropolis Literary Festival. She is the author of an award-winning novella, The Proxy Bride, and the recent novel, Sputnik's Daughter. Her stories draw on her background in the Niagara region as the youngest child of an Italian family that loved science fiction, good wine, gadgetry, comic books, hot rods, daredevils and dark humour. Visit her blog at terrifavro.ca. She lives in Toronto.

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• Ken Klonsky Novella contest

The Proxy Bride is a compact epic, replete with passion, betrayal, skullduggery and midnight escapes. You will never see Ontario’s Niagara Region the same way again.