Novelist Christine Higdon at Gallery Coffee Shop & Bistro March 5
Christine Higdon, writer, editor, graphic designer, rug hooker, and intersectional feminist, will talk about her artistic practice and read from her new novel, Gin, Turpentine, Pennyroyal, Rue, at The Gallery Coffee Shop on Great George Street, Charlottetown, on Tuesday, March 5, at 7:00 pm. The evening is sponsored by the UPEI Faculty of Arts and The Bookmark. Admission is free.
Higdon vividly brings to life Prohibition-era Vancouver a century ago and four very different working-class sisters, still reeling from the First World War’s impact and scraping to get by. “It is impossible not to root for the McKenzie sisters,” writes author Rachel Rose, “as they fight for justice and forge their own identities, demanding the right to love and learn freely, despite the subjugation under which they live.”
Gin, Turpentine, Pennyroyal, Rue is immersed in the complex political and social realities of the 1920s and, not so ironically, of the 2020s: love, sex, desire, police corruption, abortion, addiction, and women wanting more, much more.
Filmmaker and author Attiyah Khan wrote that Higdon’s first novel, The Very Marrow of Our Bones, “beautifully and honestly illuminates the devastating impact of loss and abuse.”
Newfoundland novelist Donna Morrissey says of Higdon’s elegant and witty new novel, “Christine Higdon is a brilliant storyteller...undoubtedly one of the best books I’ve read in years.”
The daughter of a Newfoundlander and a British Columbian, Higdon spends as much time as she can in Nova Scotia; the rest of the time, she lives near Lake Ontario in Toronto. There, she works on her art, worries about the bees, and longs for the ocean.
