CRACKED POTS

A deeply immersive, redemptive story about a girl broken by cruelty and truth, who rises after the blows, gathers the fragments, and pieces together a remarkable life of creativity and kindness.

1969. Ari Appleton's classmate Natasha has disappeared, and Ari's stepfather Dick is determined to solve the case and make detective. Ari retreats from the search, grateful that the trouble isn't the fault of an Appleton. She has enough to do protecting yo ung Mikey from her drunken mother and Dick.

Natasha's body is discovered days before Ari escapes from Toronto. As clues unfold and golden boy Byron
Silver is revealed as the killer, there's growing terror in Ari that she and Byron are related. Then her mother dies, and her true love Jake is partially blinded and pushes her out of his life. Despite the mayhem, Ari becomes aware that she is strong in the broken places. Harnessing energy from all the calamity, Ari creates new art and sets to building a hous e. She faces the ghosts of a traumatic past and the truth of being the daughter of broken humans. She is a shattered pot, to be pieced together by her own hands and heart.

HEATHER TUCKER's novel The Clay Girl is an enduring book club favorite that was a finalist for the Kobo Emerging Writer Prize and the Atlantic Book Award, and also an American Booksellers Association Indie Pick. She has won many prose and short-story writing competitions, and her stories have appeared in anthologies and literary journals. She lives in Ajax, Ontario.