Shelter

Greenslade’s beautiful debut novel (after the memoir By a Secret Ladder) chronicles the struggles of sisters Maggie and Jenny as they attempt to make sense of a life without parents in rural Duchess Creek, Canada, in the 1970s. After their father dies in a tragic logging accident when the girls are young, Maggie and Jenny’s mother drops them off with friends, and never returns. As weeks bleed into months that pool into years, Maggie and Jenny grow into very different teenagers, though both girls labor on with the memory of their beloved father and the persistent hope that one day their mother might return. Maggie, the narrator, finds comfort in local loner Vern George—with whom she builds makeshift shelters in the woods—and his kind Uncle Leslie. When Jenny gets pregnant and is shipped off to Our Lady of Perpetual Help Home for Unwed Mothers, Maggie takes it upon herself to locate their prodigal mother—or at least uncover her fate—and build a true shelter wherein Maggie and Jenny might reconstitute the loving family they once had. Agent: Denise Bukowski, the Bukowski Agency. (May)