Winner of the Marian Engel Award
A man on the run, a woman in pursuit: Terry Griggs's new novel is a wildly entertaining and inventive take on the war between the sexes, delicious to read, impossible to put down.
On his wedding night in 1898, Griffith Smolders, already unnerved by the conjugal duties that await him, is chased around his hotel room by ball lightning - and he takes it as a sign that he is not ready to be a husband. Jumping out the window, he flees into the night, leaving behind his bride. When the immodest and beautiful Avice realizes she's been abandoned, she swears she will exact a suitably nasty revenge.
Like Odysseus in reverse, Grif keeps on running - away from home, from himself and most especially from Avice. And, of course, he runs into trouble. Trying to help a coquettish young woman, he inadvertently boards a ship about to sink. The sole survivor, he washes up near a lighthouse. When he finally runs out of steam, and holes up in a little hotel in a northern frontier town, he finds that another Griffith Smolders has mysteriously appeared.
Meanwhile, Avice sets out to hunt him. The lengths to which she goes in stalking her wayward husband reveal that she is definitely not a member of the weaker sex. And when, at last, she runs him to ground, the collision between the two is even more electric than the lightning that began it.
Winner of the Marian Engel Award
A man on the run, a woman in pursuit: Terry Griggs's new novel is a wildly entertaining and inventive take on the war between the sexes, delicious to read, impossible to put down.
On his wedding night in 1898, Griffith Smolders, already unnerved by the conjugal duties that await him, is chased around his hotel room by ball lightning - and he takes it as a sign that he is not ready to be a husband. Jumping out the window, he flees into the night, leaving behind his bride. When the immodest and beautiful Avice realizes she's been abandoned, she swears she will exact a suitably nasty revenge.
Like Odysseus in reverse, Grif keeps on running - away from home, from himself and most especially from Avice. And, of course, he runs into trouble. Trying to help a coquettish young woman, he inadvertently boards a ship about to sink. The sole survivor, he washes up near a lighthouse. When he finally runs out of steam, and holes up in a little hotel in a northern frontier town, he finds that another Griffith Smolders has mysteriously appeared.
Meanwhile, Avice sets out to hunt him. The lengths to which she goes in stalking her wayward husband reveal that she is definitely not a member of the weaker sex. And when, at last, she runs him to ground, the collision between the two is even more electric than the lightning that began it.