Maggie may be the youngest, but she is a born worrier. Even when everything is going right for her and her sister, Jenny, for her beautiful red-haired mother, Irene, and for her dad—who loves to take Maggie into the woods around their house in Duchess Creek to teach her survival skills—she can’t help worrying.

When her dad is killed in a logging accident, it seems that Maggie was right to be anxious. But never in her wildest dreams did she imagine what happens next: one day her mom drops the girls off in Williams Lake to billet for a while with a couple who knew their dad. She says it’s only temporary and promises to come back for them soon, but weeks turn into months and then years.

When Jenny eventually gets into trouble she can’t cope with, fourteen-year-old Maggie decides that it’s up to her to find Irene and repair their fractured family. Maggie’s quest turns out to be not only finding her mother, but understanding her. And also figuring out how to forgive her.

“We did not try to look for our mother. She was gone, like a cat who goes out the back door one night and doesn’t return, and you don’t know if a coyote got her or a hawk or if she sickened somewhere and couldn’t make it home. We let time pass, we waited, trusting her, because she had always been the best of mothers. She’s the mother, that’s what we said to each other…”

PRAISE FOR SHELTER

“Exceptional novel… vivid… disarmingly honest….Absorbing, moving, memorable.”  — THE GUARDIAN

“Frances Greenslade’s stunning debut novel … a new voice has emerged from the varied wilderness of the Canadian fiction scene which is as clear as a glacier-fed stream and as compelling as that which tells a haunting story by the campfire.”  — THE SCOTSMAN

“[A] beautiful debut novel.”  — PUBLISHERS WEEKLY

“Funny, heartwarming and tragic.”  — OTTAWA CITIZEN

“Shelter is a beating heart of a book, alive with Greenslade’s fierce imagination, her acute descriptions of the natural world, her sure hand with narrative.”  — TORONTO STAR

“Greenslade has created two memorable and likable characters in Jenny and Maggie; their bare-bones tale of survival will touch readers, and likely stay with them a long time.”  — THE VANCOUVER SUN

“A harrowing, haunting, and exquisitely written novel about sisters, mothers, daughters, and whom we love and why. The characters are so alive, you feel them breathing on the page. Loved. Loved. Loved.”  — CAROLINE LEAVITT, New York Times bestselling author of Pictures of You

“A slow, quiet, addictive read.”  — THE GLOBE AND MAIL

“From the very first page, this eloquent, evocative book crept into my heart and wouldn't go away. I think it will linger inside me for a long, long time—like a powerful dream or one of those take-your-breath-away kind of tales that someone tells you in childhood and years later, still haunts you. Shelter is an unforgettable novel about love, loss, family, and what it means to go home.”  — MIRA BARTÓK, author of The Memory Palace

“Poignant, tender and vivid, Shelter traces the relationship of two daughters with their missing mother through family stories. Greenslade’s gorgeous landscapes and loving attention to her characters make this journey through loss and survival unforgettable. I was glued to every page.”  — EDEN ROBINSON, author of Monkey Beach