NATIONAL BESTSELLER

Longlist - Toronto Book Awards

Nominee - Forest of Reading Evergreen Award

Selection - Amnesty International Book Club

From the author of Canada Reads finalist Scarborough, a stunning new novel about the unbreakable bond of family and the magic that can happen when we meet in the middle

Like many Overseas Filipino Workers, Mary Grace Concepcion has lived a life of sacrifices. First, she left her husband, Ale, to be a caregiver in Hong Kong. Now, she has travelled even farther, to Canada, in the hopes of one day sponsoring Ale and having children of their own.

But when she arrives in Toronto, she must navigate a series of bewildering and careless employers and unruly children. Mary Grace seeks new employment as a Personal Support Worker and begins caring for Liz, an elderly patient suffering from Alzheimer’s disease, whose health is as fragile as her rundown bungalow beside the Rouge River in Scarborough. While Mary Grace’s time with her charge challenges her conservative beliefs, she soon becomes Liz’s biggest ally, and the friendship that grows between them will turn out to be just as legendary as Liz’s past.

Beautifully narrated by the all-seeing eye of Mary Grace’s newborn baby, The Story of Us is a novel about sisterhood, about blood and chosen family, and about how belonging can be found where we least expect it.

Catherine Hernandez (she/her) is an award-winning author and screenwriter. She is a proud queer woman who is of Filipino, Spanish, Chinese and Indian descent and married into the Navajo Nation. Her first novel, Scarborough, won the Jim Wong-Chu Award for the unpublished manuscript; was a finalist for the Toronto Book Awards, the Evergreen Forest of Reading Award, the Edmund White Award, and the Trillium Book Award; and was longlisted for Canada Reads. She has written the critically acclaimed plays Singkil, The Femme Playlist and Eating with Lola and the children’s books M Is For Mustache: A Pride ABC Book and I Promise. She recently wrote the screenplay for the film adaptation of Scarborough, which is currently in post-production by Compy Films with support from Telefilm Canada and Reel Asian Film Festival. She is the creator of Audible Original’s audio sketch comedy series Imminent Disaster. Her second novel, Crosshairs, published simultaneously in Canada and the US and the UK this spring, made the CBC's Best Canadian Fiction, NOW Magazine's 10 Best Books, Indigo Best Book, Audible Best Audiobooks and NBC 20 Best LGBTQ Books list of 2020. Her third children's book, Where Do Your Feelings Live? which is a guide for kids living through these scary times, has been commissioned by HarperCollins Canada and will be published in winter 2022. 

Catherine Hernandez's profile page

• Kobo’s Best in Fiction

“The Story of Us is a novel that is at once bold and ambitious, while simultaneously hushed and intimate. It’s emotionally bare and astute, and frequently funny and utterly human, a reminder of the bonds that hold us, over generations and across cultures.” — Toronto Star

"A unique, intriguing and beautiful novel." — Winnipeg Free Press