On the Shores of Darkness, There Is Light
CBC Books | CBC | Posted: February 28, 2017 6:13 PM | Last Updated: March 1, 2017
Cordelia Strube
Harriet is 11 going on 30. Her mixed-media art is a source of wonder to her younger brother, Irwin, but an unmitigated horror to the panoply of insufficiently grown-up grown-ups who surround her. She plans to run away to Algonquin Park, hole up in a cabin like Tom Thomson and paint trees; and so, to fund her escape, she runs errands for the seniors who inhabit the Shangrila, the decrepit apartment building that houses her fractured family. (From ECW Press)
On the Shores of Darkness, There Is Light won the 2016 Toronto Book Award.
From the book
Just this morning, her mother blamed her for losing the plastic pitcher for bagged milk. "Why can't you just put things back in their place?" When it turned out Harriet's little brother used the pitcher to shower his plastic animals, her mother didn't apologize to Harriet. Or scold Irwin. There's no doubt in Harriet's mind she'd be better off without her brother. She should have snuffed him when she had the chance, after they took him out of the incubator and handed him to her, all red and wrinkled, with his stretched head and veins pulsing weakly under his see-through skin.
From On the Shores of Darkness, There Is Light by Cordelia Strube ©2016. Published by ECW Press.