The Push

Driving home one night, private investigator Cal Weaver, mired in grief over the loss of his son makes a very big mistake. A girl drenched in rain taps on his car window and asks for a ride as he sits at a stoplight. Even though he knows he shouldn't, he lets her in, because she knew his son, and may know something about his death. Soon, Cal senses something’s not right with the girl, or the situation. But it’s too late. He’s already involved.

In this dual narrative novel, a modern-day woman finds inspiration in hidden notes left by her home’s previous owner, a quintessential 1950s housewife. As she discovers remarkable parallels between this woman’s life and her own, it causes her to question the foundation of her own relationship with her husband -– and what it means to be a wife fighting for her place in a patriarchal society.

After her mother's sudden death, Karen finds herself back in her childhood home caring for her older sister, Kelli. Overwhelmed by the isolation of her new role, Karen confides in Trevor--one of Kelli's caregivers. Karen gratefully accepts his friendship and comes to trust him. But all is not as it appears to be. What begins with friendly advice and someone to talk to soon takes a dark and mysterious turn. As Trevor slowly weaves himself into their lives, Karen starts to grasp the truth about him and his relationship with her mother.

Anu Krishnan is a writer renting space from Vikram, a friend from university, who has recently remarried after being widowed. Suman has arrived from India expecting something very different than her husband’s controlling and angry tirades. The friendship that develops between Anu and Suman, though, changes the balance in the house. Vikram's daughter Varsha, deeply affected by her mother’s death and desperate to keep her new family together, becomes suspicious of Anu’s relationship with her stepmother.

The story of the Canary family, their immoderate passions and eccentricities, and their secret lives and histories. The deepest secret of all is harbored in the silence of the youngest daughter, Joan, who doesn’t grow, who doesn’t speak, but is a piano prodigy. Joan is a mystery but her family eventually comes to understand that each of them is a mystery. In its compassionate investigation of moral truths and its bold embrace of the fractured nature of every one of its characters.

Swiv is a nine-year-old living in Toronto with her pregnant mother, who is raising Swiv while caring for her own elderly, frail, yet extraordinarily lively mother. Swiv records her thoughts and observations about the pain, love, laughter, and above all, will to live a good life across three generations of women in a close-knit family. But it is Swiv’s exasperating, wise and irrepressible Grandma who is at the heart of this novel: someone who knows what it costs to survive in this world, yet has found a way to love and fight to the end, on her own terms.