"A clever and propulsive debut novel tracing the complicated relationship between a larger-than-life actress who refuses to abandon her career for motherhood, and the daughter she chooses to abandon instead, as they confront one another once and for all"--

While caring for her Japanese mother, an unnamed narrator, preoccupied with her mother's garden, embarks on a torrid affair with an arborist equally fascinated by it and as she becomes obsessed with the awakening of her own body, she begins to see her mother's illness as part of a natural order.

"Maren Winter is a world-renowned restaurateur who has built an empire. No one heeds the whispers of her retirement more closely than her three daughters, all in service to their mother's legacy. On the night of Maren's annual New Year's Eve party, a line is crossed, and word of a humiliating family meltdown spreads like a Northern California wildfire through the culinary elite. It's a golden opportunity for one of them to step into power and a trigger...

"A quirky, thrilling, darkly-funny page-turner that explores the fuzzy lines between sanity and insanity, magic and reality, love and duty. It's 1969. An eight-year-old girl, Elizabeth Squire, has a choice to make: to be disabled by the circumstances of her own botched birth or to become extraordinary. In Buffy Cram's captivating new novel, Elizabeth narrates the story of her childhood in the late sixties, describing how she came to be at a Vancouver...