AVAILABLE

ISBN 13: 978-1-894759-74-8
ISBN 10: 1-894759-74-5
Price: $18.95 CAD; $18.95 USD
Paperback
5.5 x 8 - 160 pp
February 2012

by Arleen Paré

In Leaving Now, Arleen Paré, winner of the 2010 Victoria Butler Book Prize, weaves fable, prose and poetics to create a rich mosaic of conflicted motherhood.

Book Description

Set in the volatile 1970s and ’80s, when social norms and expectations were changing rapidly, Leaving Now is the emotionally candid story of a mother’s anguish as she leaves her husband to love a woman. In this second book, Paré masterfully blends aspects of her personal journey with her own version of a well-loved fairy tale. Gudrun, the five-hundred-year-old mother of Hansel and Gretel, appears hazily in the narrator’s kitchen—presumed dead, all but written out of her own tale, but very much alive. Gudrun spins a yarn of love, loss and leaving, offering comfort and wisdom to the conflicted young mother.

Raising children is not for the faint of heart; all parents know the anguish of parting from a child, even if for the briefest moment. Leaving Now is for mothers, fathers, sons and daughters. It is for anyone who has ever lived in a family.