Adult onset

Mary Rose MacKinnon writes young adult fiction and is currently at home with her two small children. Her partner, Hilary, has taken her turn at putting a career first. Mary Rose handles most of the parenting alone, while her aging parents also demand her time and attention.

The household is full of comic moments, but dread runs underneath them. There are dents in the expensive refrigerator. A car alarm sounds all morning before she realizes it is her own. Her sharpest scissors end up in her toddler's hands.

As her frustrations build, symptoms of an illness from her childhood return. They push her to look again at how she was raised and at her family's history.

The story covers a single, outwardly ordinary week, in which Mary Rose's world starts to come apart and the threat of violence appears, with real danger for her and her children. It is a domestic novel about family ties, how strong they are and how easily they can be bent or broken. The tone mixes humor with dark, frightening stretches, and the book is ultimately uplifting.