Lives Lived, Lives Imagined

Perceptive, controversial, topical, and achingly funny, Miriam Toewss books have earned her a place at the forefront of Canadian literature. In this first monograph on Toewss work, Sabrina Reed examines the interplay of trauma and resilience in the authors fiction. Reed skillfully demonstrates how Toews situates resilience across key themes, including: the home as both a source of trauma and an inspiration for resilient action; the road trip as a search for resolution and redemption; and the reframing of the Mennonite diaspora as an escape from patriarchal oppression. The dual suicides of Toewss father and sister stand out as the most shocking and tragic of the authors biographical details, and Reed explores Toewss use of autofiction as a reparative gesture in the face of this trauma.Written in an accessible style that will appeal to both scholars and devotees of Toewss work, Lives Lived, Lives Imagined is a timely examination of Toewss oeuvre and a celebration of fictions ability to simultaneously embody compassion and anger, joy and sadness, and to brave the personal and communal oppressions of politics, religion, family, society, and mental illness.