Coast to Coast “Canada’s Mysterious Women” Literary Series

Gail Anderson-Dargatz’s first novel, The Cure for Death by Lightning, was a finalist for the Scotiabank Giller Prize and won the UK’s Betty Trask Award, the BC Book Prize for Fiction and the Vancity Book Prize. Her second novel, A Recipe for Bees, was nominated for the IMPAC Dublin Literary Award and was a finalist for the Scotiabank Giller Prize. The Spawning Grounds, her first novel after the 2007 bestseller Turtle Valley, was published in 2016, nominated for the Sunburst Award and the Ontario Library Association Evergreen Award, and short-listed for the Canadian Authors Association Literary Award for fiction. She taught for nearly a decade within the MFA program in creative writing at the University of British Columbia and now mentors writers online. Gail Anderson-Dargatz lives in the Shuswap region of British Columbia and, until recently, owned a summer home on Manitoulin Island, Ontario.

THE ALMOST WIFE SYNOPSIS
If you almost had everything that you wanted, how hard would you fight to protect it?

Kira is engaged to the man of her dreams: he’s charming, handsome, wealthy, and a great dad to their baby, Evie, and his thirteen-year-old daughter, Olive. Having grown up with a troubled relationship with her mother and mostly estranged from her father, Kira craves a close family and secure home, and with Aaron, Evie and Olive, she almost has it. The only problem is Aaron’s ex-wife, Madison, who’s out of control and trying to get to Olive. When Kira takes the girls out of town to her childhood summer home and finds out that Madison has followed them, she panics.

Between the beach and the forest on Manitoulin Island, Kira fights to protect Olive, Evie and her fiancé, until a dark secret threatens to unravel the life that is almost hers. With the future she has built hanging in the balance, and her past haunting her at every turn, Kira must choose who to believe and who she wants to be.

Ann Shin is a writer and filmmaker, as well as an award-winning poet. Her documentary My Enemy, My Brother was shortlisted for a 2016 Academy Award and nominated for an Emmy. Her previous documentary, The Defector: Escape from North Korea won 7 awards including Best Documentary and Best Documentary Director at the 2014 Canadian Screen Academy Awards, a SXSW Interactive Award, and a Canadian Digi Award. She has directed programs and series for CBC, Discovery Channel, HGTV, History Channel, W Network, PBS, and Fine Living Network. Ann lives in Toronto, and The Last Exiles is her first novel.

THE LAST EXILES SYNOPSIS
Jin and Suja met and fell in love while studying at university in Pyongyang. She was a young journalist from a prominent family, while he was from a small village of little means. Outside the school, the people of North Korea have come under the grip of great political upheaval, plunged into chaos and famine. When Jin returns home to find his family starving, their food rations all but gone, he makes a rash decision that will haunt him for the rest of his life.

Meanwhile, miles away, Suja has begun to feel the tenuousness of her privilege when she learns that Jin has disappeared. Risking everything, and defying her family, Suja sets out to find him, embarking on a dangerous and uncertain journey that will test both of their love and their will to survive.

In this vivid and moving story, award-winning documentary filmmaker Ann Shin offers a rare glimpse at life inside the guarded walls of North Korea, and the harrowing experiences of those who are daring enough to attempt escape. Inspired by true stories of incredible bravery, The Last Exiles is a searing portrait of a young couple and the lengths they’ll go in their fight for love and freedom.