Shelter

(Paperback)

---

Publishing Details

Classifications

Physical Properties

Description

Maggie's father is 'Mr Safety'. He knows the woods of Duchess Creek in Northern Canada like the back of his hand, and he has taught his daughter how to survive, how to find and make a shelter in all weathers, in any conditions. Along with her sister, Jenny, and their mother Irene, they are safe from the outside world. But when an accident at work goes fatally wrong, Irene struggles to look after her daughters alone.

Wild, imaginative and unpredictable, she billets the two girls with a family, promising to return once the summer is over and she has earned more money. But the summer turns to winter, which rolls round again and again. When the letters stop, the two sisters realise that they can rely on no one but themselves - but what kind of shelter can two young girls make for themselves

Reviews

"Poignant, tender and vivid, Shelter traces the relationship of two daughters with their missing mother through family stories. Greenslade's gorgeous landscapes and loving attention to her characters make this journey through loss and survival unforgettable. I was glued to every page."
--Eden Robinson, author of Monkey Beach

"This book casts a strong spell--the landscape is so vividly rendered, it is a character all on its own, and sisters Maggie and Jenny are unforgettable in their resilience. Greenslade depicts the battle between different types of love with harrowing intensity and quiet compassion. Shelter shows us how wilderness can be a safer haven than a home with four walls, but also how love, despite its heartbreaking unpredictability, remains the shelter we desire most."
--Jamie Zeppa, author of Every Time We Say Goodbye

"From the very first page, this eloquent, evocative book crept into my heart and wouldn't go away. I think it will linger inside me for a long, long time--like a powerful dream or one of those take-your-breath-away kind of tales that someone tells you in childhood and years later, still haunts you. Shelter is an unforgettable novel about love, loss, family and what it means to go home."
--Mira Bartok, author of The Memory Palace

"The longing for a lost mother has rarely been expressed so soulfully. The yearning of these two vulnerable young sisters for their mother, who has disappeared, is palpable. I was entirely absorbed in their precarious situation and their desire to find her, yet aware that their mother's gift was the resourcefulness they needed to survive. Greenslade is a fresh new voice that you are sure to hear again."
--Bobbie Ann Mason, author of The Girl in the Blue Beret

"Shelter is a beating heart of a book, alive with Greenslade's fierce imagination, her acute descriptions of the natural world, her sure hand with narrative."
--Toronto Star

"In prose as lush and vivid as its British Columbia landscapes, Frances Greenslade's debut novel, Shelter, offers an achingly beautiful story of loss, longing and hope. I love this book."
--Will Allison, author of Long Drive Home

"The Chilcotin area of British Columbia in the 1970s is intensely realised in a combination of family saga, local superstition and love for the blue summers and deep winters of this remote region...[a] yearning and beautifully articulate work."
--The Guardian

"A new voice has emerged from the varied wilderness of the Canadian fiction scene which is as clear as a glacier-fed stream and as compelling as that which tells a haunting story by the campfire."
--The Scotsman

"A harrowing, haunting and exquisitely written novel about sisters, mothers, daughters, and whom we love and why. The characters are so alive, you feel them breathing on the page. Loved. Loved. Loved."
--Caroline Leavitt, author of Pictures of You

Author Bio

Frances Greenslade was born in St Catharines, Ontario, and has since lived in Manitoba, Saskatchewan and British Columbia. She is the author of two works of non-fiction, A Pilgrim in Ireland which won the Saskatchewan Book Award for Non-Fiction and By the Secret Ladder. Shelter is her first novel.