The Chrome Suite — Sandra Birdsell

Set in Manitoba, Sandra Birdsell's spellbinding novel reaches back nearly four decades into the life of scriptwriter Amy Barber. In a journey shadowed by the future and the past, Amy travels by car from Toronto to Winnipeg with her younger lover, and reconstructs the events that brought her to where she is today. As the narrative moves from a small town during one extraordinarily hot summer at the close of the fifties when a death changes everything, to the sixties and seventies when Amy marries, goes to live in the city, and begins to have reason to fear for her young son's well-being, Sandra Birdsell uncovers the inadvertent damage that can be done within the most well-meaning of families. Vivid, darkly humorous, erotic, The Chrome Suite is an emotionally charged story of darkness and light that evokes the sometimes dangerous territory of the past.