| Description |
1 online resource |
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text file rda |
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Digital content provided by hoopla. |
| Summary |
Four working-class Vancouver sisters, still reeling from the impact of World War I and the pandemic that stole their only brother, are scraping by but attempting to make the most of the exciting 1920s. Gin, Turpentine, Pennyroyal, Rue is a love story - but like all love stories, it's complicated … Morag is pregnant; she loves her husband. Georgina can't bear hers and dreams of getting an education. Harriet-Jean, still at home with her opium-addicted mother, is in love with a woman. Isla's pregnant too - and in love with her sister's husband. Only one soul knows about Isla's pregnancy, and it isn't the father. When Isla resorts to a back-street abortion and nearly dies, Llewellyn becomes hellbent on revenge. But can revenge lead to anything but disaster for a man like Llew - a policeman tangled up in running rum to Prohibition America? Gin, Turpentine, Pennyroyal, Rue is immersed in the complex political and social realities of the 1920s and, not-so ironically, of the 2020s: love, sex, desire, police corruption, abortion, addiction, and women wanting more. Beautifully written, with a loveable cast of characters, this novel is a tender account of love that cannot be acknowledged, of loss and regret, risk and defiance, abiding friendship, and the powerful bonds of chosen family. Gin, Turpentine, Pennyroyal, Rue: A Novel is a tender account of love that cannot be acknowledged, of loss and regret, risk and defiance, abiding friendship, and the powerful bonds of chosen family. Christine Higdon is the author of the award-winning novel The Very Marrow of Our Bones. She has won a National Magazine Award, been published in numerous journals, and nominated for CBC literary prizes. She lives part-time in Nova Scotia but mostly in Mimico, Ontario. We blamed up. Some families blame down: The younger siblings are held responsible for every broken teacup. For the dirt trod into the house the day the floors have been washed, waxed, and polished. For the missing belt, cardigan, garter, stocking, shoe, skate, pencil, ink bottle, hair ribbon, knitting needle, darning egg, spool of blue thread, biscuit, mint humbug, five-cent piece, brooch, book. For the stolen friend. (Especially the stolen friend.) In families with a multitude of children, there is always someone else to point the finger at-up, down, this way, that. We blamed up. Our eldest, Rodric, lies in Mountain View Cemetery, six feet under, so I can't ask poor Roddy how he managed the shameless accusations of his four little sisters for so long. I suspect it never bothered him much. Roddy was a forgiving soul. And he loved us. Our second-eldest, the one we call Baby John, who none of us but Roddy spent any living time with (and that was when he was just a baby himself), escaped all that. Baby John the Blameless, left behind, poor wee bugger, buried thousands of miles away, over the Atlantic Ocean in Scotland. Harriet-Jean, the youngest, was free to blame us all, all the way up the ladder-Morag, me, Georgina, Roddy. I'm the middle child. Up or down. You do the math. We are grown now, and still. I think that's my own pointer finger tapping at my chest. And you? Is that your finger too: tap, tap, tap? Whose destiny did I change by loving my sister's husband? His? Mine? Hers? Some girl's, fifty years from now? Call it what you will; I'm going to call it a love story. Maybe you will forgive me. Maybe I will forgive myself. Perhaps there is nothing to forgive. But carve these words on my headstone when I am gone: If only. "In her latest book, Gin, Turpentine, Pennyroyal, Rue, award-winning author Christine Higdon looks to the 1920s for her achingly beautiful story of sisterhood-those bound by blood and those bound by their shared predicament of living and loving in the absence of agency. Ever a consummate wordsmith, Higdon's elegant dispatch from the front lines of the bat |
| System Details |
Mode of access: World Wide Web. |
| Subject |
Sisters -- Fiction.
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Man-woman relationships -- Fiction.
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Triangles (Interpersonal relations) -- Fiction.
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Working class -- Fiction.
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Canadians -- Fiction.
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Brothers -- Death -- Fiction.
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Lesbians -- Fiction.
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Abortion -- Fiction.
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Women -- Canada -- Social conditions -- 20th century -- Fiction.
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Nineteen twenties -- Fiction.
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Historical fiction.
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Electronic books.
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| Added Author |
hoopla digital.
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| ISBN |
9781778521942 (electronic bk.) |
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1778521940 (electronic bk.) |
| Music No. |
MWT15991810 |
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