SEMI-DETACHED
September 2023, published by Cormorant Books
Hearts may freeze or thaw, but love never dies.
In December 2013, an ice storm buries Toronto as realtor Laura Keys prepares to sell a one-of-a-kind house on behalf of its comatose owner. Haunting Laura, and longing to be invited in, is a mysterious teenage girl with a Scottish Terrier tucked into her coat.
As Laura readies the house for showing, she learns more about its owner, Edna “Eddie” Ferguson. Leading up to the Great Snowstorm of 1944, Eddie, a brickmaker, enters into a passionate yet ill-fated affair with her boss’s daughter. While uncovering the past, Laura navigates both the death of her mother and a troubled marriage straining under the weight of her infertility.
Across two paralyzing winter storms, set nearly seventy years apart and connected by a house and a murder, Semi-Detached contends with living after loss, love, and the meaning of home.
Insightful and evocative, emotionally intelligent and propulsive, this is a novel from a writer at the top of her game.
"Part love story, part ghost story, part murder mystery -- Elizabeth Ruth's Semi-Detached is all heart. Fiercely compelling and beautifully nuanced. A modern novel for the ages. Just brilliant."
Helen Humphreys, author of The Lost Garden & Leaving Earth
"Semi-Detached will cast a spell over you. Elizabeth Ruth has crafted a beautiful and tender tale of the shelters we all need to house our love and our yearning. Sheer magic and a joy to read."
Lynne Kutsukake,
author of The Translation of Love
PRESS FOR SEMI-DETACHED
Toronto Star -
Our books editor on the 30 (plus!) new reads we can’t wait to cosy up with this fall
Novels from heavy hitters such as Stephen King and Zadie Smith, non-fiction from Ken Dryden, and a bevy of short stories, biographies and more.
CBC Books -
74 works of Canadian fiction to read in fall 2023
Here are the Canadian novels and short story collections we are excited to read in the second half of 2023.
The Globe and Mail-
Sixty-two books to read this fall
Clear your nightstands for autumn’s best reads, including fiction from Canadian stars Waubgeshig Rice and Mona Awad, and non-fiction tales of political intrigue and tech gone awry.
MATADORA
Matadora is set in 1930's Spain and Mexico, and centres on a girl named Luna Caballero Garcia. Luna is orphaned young and a servant of the famed Garcia family. She is determined to become a bullfighter, despite her lowly station in life and the fact that women are prohibited from graduating to the status of matador-do-toros. She burns for the ring, and is willing to bend or break any rule to enter it.
Fortunately, Luna finds unlikely patrons in her master’s sons. Manuel, an aspiring poet and socialist, sees in his surrogate sister the genius he wishes he was; Pedro sees a chance to make an astonishing amount of money. The trio decides to travel abroad where Luna will have the opportunity to prove her skill, but she knows her true destiny lies in the blood-soaked sands of home.
Matadora is a powerful, compelling exploration of love and ambition. The pain that drives our ambition, the yearning for love it reveals, the lengths we go to win love, and the price we pay along the way. Matadora is about someone like you, trying against all odds, to win love.
SMOKE
In the 1950s, in the Ontario tobacco-growing community of Smoke, a young boy on the verge of manhood is scarred forever. A night out with his buddies, too much booze and a lit cigarette, and Buster McFiddie's life will never be the same. Through the process of healing, one man's voice speaks to him, softly, to ease his pain, spinning yarns of The Purple Gang, the notorious Detroit mob. It is the voice of John Gray, the town doctor, and soon it's clear that telling these tales means as much to Doc as hearing them means to Buster.
In an era of conformity, a disfigured boy tries to move his life forward, and an old man grapples desperately with his past: the convergence of two lives on the cusp will change each of them, and the small-town world that binds them, in ways they could not have imagined.
Elizabeth Ruth's second novel is a tour de force: a potent, richly inventive story of identity and transformation, of reconciliation between the way you are seen, and the truth of who you really are.
TEN GOOD SECONDS OF SILENCE
This debut novel introduces an astonishing new voice to the Canadian literary scene. With fresh, inspiring language, and characters who steal your heart, Elizabeth Ruth weaves together an unforgettable story of loss and landscape of memory.