Open Arms

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Bessie Smith Connolly has lived with her Nova Scotia grandparents since she was small. But at seventeen—grieving the death of her steadfast grandfather, smarting from a split with the boy she loves—she escapes to Saskatoon to be with her mother, Isabel.

Bittersweet, clear-eyed, and deeply affecting, this marvellous debut novel charts Bessie’s course as she makes her way through her exploded family and out into the world.

AUTHOR

Marina Endicott

Marina Endicott’s novel Good to a Fault won the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize Best Book Award, Canada and the Caribbean, was a finalist for the Scotiabank Giller Prize, and one of The Globe and Mail’s Top 100 Books of 2008. Her next, The Little Shadows, was shortlisted for the Governor General’s award and longlisted for the Giller Prize, as was Close to Hugh. Her debut novel, Open Arms, was a finalist for the 2001 Amazon/Books in Canada First Novel Award and broadcast on CBC Radio’s Between the Covers. Endicott lives in Alberta most of the time.

Reviews

“Open Arms is the story of a young woman’s quest. Her search is for a mother, her hope is for a final, hard-won comprehension, a reprieve from the ache of being human. But, as in the finest of quest stories, comprehension does not come at some big, dramatic end, it comes all along the complicated way. Marina Endicott’s vision is evidence that the journey itself, although lonely and uncharted, can be filled with both clues and consolation.” ? Bonnie Burnard