This One Wild Life
CBC Books | | Posted: February 1, 2021 10:10 PM | Last Updated: December 6, 2021
Angie Abdou
Disillusioned with overly competitive organized sports and concerned about her lively daughter's growing shyness, author Angie Abdou sets herself a challenge: to hike a peak a week over the summer holidays with Katie. They will bond in nature and discover the glories of outdoor activity. What could go wrong? Well, among other things, it turns out that Angie loves hiking but Katie doesn't.
Hilarious, poignant, and deeply felt, This One Wild Life explores parenting and marriage in a summer of unexpected outcomes and growth for both mother and daughter. (From ECW Press)
Angie Abdou is a teacher, writer and frequent columnist for The Next Chapter. Her first novel, The Bone Cage, was championed by Georges Laraque on Canada Reads 2011. Her other books include the novels The Canterbury Trail, Between and In Case I Go and the nonfiction book Home Ice.
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Why Angie Abdou wrote This One Wild Life
"I had been busy chasing my son around with his hockey and being a hockey mom. Somehow I had missed that my daughter had gotten so shy and so timid that it was causing problems at school. When I first heard that from the principal, I felt like this girl that they were describing couldn't possibly be my daughter. There was a total disconnect.
"We had switched schools and she was having trouble making friends. But she was also scared to do things like go to the library on her own, talk to the secretary or be in front of the school alone. When she spoke in class, you couldn't hear her.
Somehow I had missed that my daughter had gotten so shy and so timid that it was causing problems at school.
"This is not the girl I know at home at all. It was so hard for me to imagine not being true, at first. My husband said, 'Oh, of course it's true. She's far different when she's around other people.' But I hadn't seen it."