by Jane Urquhart (2010)
"Solitary, nostalgic Liz Crane returns to her family's now-deserted farmhouse--once the setting for countless happy summers spent on the northern shore of Lake Erie--to study the migratory habits of the Monarch butterfly. Encompassing all the colorful stories and blarney of successful Irish immigrants who have made the most of their relocation to North America, the Cranes' rich family history is now circumscribed by sadness. Liz's beloved cousin Amanda, a gifted military strategist, has been killed in Afghanistan, a loss that had been foreshadowed many years in the past by the disappearance of Amanda's charismatic father"--Dust jacket flap.
Avner Mandelman
"In 1977, having renounced his Israeli citizenship and withdrawn from his family, David Starkman is living a new life in Canada, haunted by persistent nightmares following his military service as a chandestine assassin. When news reaches him of his father's gruesome murder, he reluctantly returns to his homeland for what he hopes will be the final time"--Page 2 of cover.
Johanna Skibsrud
Johanna Skibsrud's debut novel connects the flooding of an Ontario town, the Vietnam War, a trailer in North Dakota, and an unfinished boat in Maine. Parsing family history, worn childhood memories, and the palimpsest of old misunderstandings, Skibsrud's narrator maps her father's past.
Kathleen Winter
Born a boy and a girl but raised as a boy, Wayne or "Annabel" struggles with his identity growing up in a small Canadian town and seeks freedom by moving to the city.
Christine Schutt
Alice Fivey, fatherless since she was seven, is left in the care of her relatives at ten when her love-wearied mother loses custody of her and enters "the San," submitting to years of psychiatric care. She is moved from place to place, remaining still while others mold her into someone different from her namesake mother. Alice consoles herself with books, and she herself becomes a storyteller who must build her own home word by word. Florida is her story, told in brief scenes of spare beauty as Alice moves ever further from the desolation of her mother's actions, into adulthood and closer to the meaning of her own experience.