On the Shores of Darkness, There Is Light

From the acclaimed author of Lemon comes a clever and heartbreaking new novel of love and redemption

Shortlisted for the 2016 Toronto Book Award

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.

Determined, resourceful, and a little reckless, Harriet tries to navigate the clueless adults around her, dumpster dives for the flotsam and jetsam that fuels her art, and attempts to fathom her complicated feelings for Irwin, who suffers from hydrocephalus. On the other hand, Irwin’s love for Harriet is not conflicted at all. She’s his compass. But Irwin himself must untangle the web of the human heart.

Masterful and mordantly funny, Strube is at the top of her considerable form in this deliciously subversive story of love and redemption.

Cordelia Strube is a playwright and the author of nine critically acclaimed novels. Her first novel, Alex and Zee, was shortlisted for the W.H. Smith/Books in Canada First Novel Award, and her third novel, Teaching Pigs to Sing, was nominated for the Governor General’s Award. She is a three-time nominee for the ReLit Award. Her play Mortal won the CBC Literary Competition and was nominated for the Prix Italia. Her novel Lemon was shortlisted for the 2010 Trillium Book Award and longlisted for the Scotiabank Giller Prize. She lives with her family in Toronto where she teaches at Ryerson University.