Longlisted for the 1999 Women's Prize for Fiction
Nine-year-old Teddy is playing next door when his best friend Eric, hands him his father’s handgun. The gun goes off, shooting Teddy’s two-year-old half sister, Trina, who is playing in their yard – the mother Giselle, by her side. Fault lines appear as Giselle’s husband finds himself unable to forgive his stepson, and even she wonders, “Where is my unconditional maternal love?” As Swick limns the emotional landscape of a family devastated by loss, she poses the unaskable questions: What would you do? How would you forgive? Whom do you love more?
