Quarry

Set in southern Ontario during the 1980s, acclaimed poet Catherine Graham’s debut novel is as layered as the open-pit mine for which it is named. Only child Caitlin Maharg lives with her parents beside a water-filled limestone quarry, but her idyllic upbringing collapses when she learns her mother is dying. After a series of family secrets emerges, she must confront the past and face her uncertain future. Lyrically charged, jewelled with images, and at times darkly comic, Graham’s prose weaves a mysterious, hypnotic tale of loss, deception, and the courage to swim the depths of life alone.

AUTHOR

Catherine Graham

Catherine Grahams debut novel, Quarry, was a finalist for the Sarton Womens Book Award for Contemporary Fiction and Fred Kerner Book Award and won the Miramichi Readers The Very Best! Book Award and an Independent Publisher Book Awards gold medal for Fiction. She is the author of seven acclaimed poetry collections, including Æther: An Out-of-Body Lyric, nominated for a Toronto Book Awards and The Celery Forest, a CBC Best Book of the Year and finalist for the Fred Cogswell Award for Excellence in Poetry. Her Red Hair Rises with the Wings of Insects was a finalist for the Raymond Souster Award and CAA Poetry Award. She teaches creative writing at the University of Toronto where she won an Excellence in Teaching Award. A previous winner of the Toronto International Festival of Authors Poetry NOW competition, she leads their monthly book club and interviews for By the Lake Book Club. Visit her online at www.catherinegraham.com and @catgrahampoet

Reviews

Quarry is a dropdead gorgeous piece of writing a novel that gave me goose bumps even on a second reading Search it out and read it gentle tough and a superb work of fiction

– The Sun Times Owen Sound

Graham draws us deep into a world that is both ordinary and haunted a world infused with mysterious rifts in the rhythms of life and thick with signs of encroaching death
– Nancy Wigston
– Toronto Star

An accomplished poet Graham makes her fiction debut with the luminous Quarry a delicate comingofage story with an engaging protagonist Her lyrical writing shines through spinning beautiful contemplative images out of simple moments With Quarry she has mined her personal experience of loss to produce a strong debut novelmysterious rich and full of quiet insights about family dynamics

– Alissa McArthur
– Room Magazine