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It is an exquisitely written ode to sisters, mothers, daughters, and to a woman's responsibility to herself and those she loves. Heartwarming and lushly imagined, Shelter celebrates the love between two sisters and the complicated bonds of family. Even as the sisters struggle to understand how their mother could abandon them, they keep alive the hope that she is fighting her way back to the daughters who adore her and who need her so desperately. With deep compassion and sparkling prose, Frances Greenslade's mesmerizing debut takes us inside the extraordinary strength of these two girls as they are propelled from the quiet, natural freedom in which they were raised to a world they can't begin to fathom. Then her worst fears come true: Not long after Maggie's tenth birthday, their father is killed in a logging accident, and a few months later, their mother abruptly drops the girls at a neighbor's house, promising to return. But at night, Maggie-a born worrier-would count the freckles on her father's weathered arms, listening for the peal of her mother's laughter in the kitchen, and never stop praying to keep them all safe from harm. Seasons in their tiny rustic home were peppered with wilderness hikes, building shelters from pine boughs and telling stories by the fire with their doting father and beautiful, adventurous mother. Absorbing, moving, memorable, this is a book that would speak to young adult readers, too.A gorgeous, poetic literary debut from award-winning author Frances Greenslade, Shelter is a brilliant coming-of-age story of two strong, brave sisters searching for their mother.įor sisters Maggie and Jenny growing up in the Pacific mountains in the early 1970s, life felt nearly perfect. In a place so sparsely populated, every relationship has to be carefully tested for the good that may be hidden within it. Many stories are lightly woven into the main weft so that a rich picture emerges of the remote Chilcotin region of British Columbia. Greenslade's evocation of 1970s Canada is vivid, her storytelling disarmingly honest and without trickery. Even more challenging than the vast snowy forests is the emotional desert in which they find themselves.

She and her older but less resilient sister, Jenny, need to provide their own shelter from the harsh environment of the Canadian wilderness. In Frances Greenslade's exceptional novel, her young narrator, Maggie, tries to summon every scrap of advice her parents ever gave her in order to survive without them. You may need to withstand elemental onslaughts or, just as testing, the wrecking of your interior landscape. T here is more than one kind of survival.

Shelter by Frances Greenslade