Author Description

Set in the semi-rural landscape of small-town Saskatchewan, cousins Jennifer and Jason are very close, living in adjacent, sometimes overlapping households. But one act of family violence begets another, and the counsins drift apart. By adolescence, the two have become estranged. Jennifer grows closer to her best friend, Donna, an evangelical minister's daughter who rebels against her family with pornography and mathematics. Jason slides into the world of hockey--with a homoerotic H. Donna likes Jason's street-hockey bruises. Jason's also interested in Gordon, a semi-recluse who lives on the periphery of town and constructs art installations from leather, tamarack, animal skulls, and other found items. In this tale of sexual awakening on the stark Canadian prairie, horses, bears, cousins, and other human animals conspire in a series of conflicts that result in accidental gunfire and scarring--both physical and emotional--that takes many years to heal.--Cover, p.4.