WHEN THE SAINTS

A wise, flinty, thoughtful, self-assured and beautifully written page-turner about the hardscrabble world of a family of misfits that will appeal to fans of Miriam Toews' A Complicated Kindness and Heather O'Neill's Lullabies for Little Criminals.

Is it possible to redeem a family name that has been spoken as a curse word for generations? A decade after being cast off to live with strangers, Tabby Saint returns to Solace River to find her childhood home is dilapidated and deserted. She quickly latches onto the lonely tavern-keeper, West, who informs her that her family was run out of town. Tabby heads out to nearby Jubilant to find the fragments of her family: her addict sister, Poppy, and her two young kids; her brothers, Bird and Jackie, one crippled by a vicious attack and the other holding onto a dangerous grudge against the men responsible; a threadbare version of the bulletproof mother she remembers; and an ailing father, a man so vile he is unworthy of forgiveness even on his deathbed. Irreverent and mouthy as they ever were, the Saints are still a lightning rod for trouble. When a new storm arises, Tabby must choose whether to stay or run back the way she came. Told through characters whose hard edges hide hungry hearts, When the Saints is the story of a family of outsiders whose redemption might be found in what they longed to escape: each other. SARAH MIAN's fiction and poetry have been published in journals such as The New Quarterly, SubTerrain, The Antigonish Review, Galleon Literary Journal, Filling Station, The Vagrant Revue of New Fiction, and Flare. She was a semi-finalist for CBC Canada Writes, winner of the Women On Writing Flash Fiction contest and a finalist for the Writers Union of Canada Short Prose Competition. She lives in a beach house in Nova Scotia where the sound of the waves crashing competes with old vinyl records. This is her first novel. In Canada, HarperCollins are publishing under their new Harper Avenue imprint which highlights “must-read titles with strong storytelling and unique voices.”