The Women's Case

On December 6, 1989, a gunman who said he was "fighting feminism" entered the École Polytechnique de Montréal. In one classroom he separated the women from the men, then opened fire on the women. Fourteen women were killed and many others were wounded before he took his own life. The country was stunned and grieving.

Canada now marks December 6 as the National Day of Remembrance and Action on Violence Against Women.

In the novel, that same kind of hatred reaches a women's shelter, where several women are killed by an enraged husband, a drug dealer hunting the wife who escaped him.

As a young orphan, Patricia is raped by a close member of her family. The novel follows what comes after: the depression, the hopelessness, the crying that comes without warning, and the loss of energy for everything she once loved.

Every survivor responds in their own way, and the effects can last for years. Patricia's story asks how a person rebuilds a life when the people meant to protect her failed her.

Before laws protected a wife's share of family property, a husband could keep everything a couple built during a marriage. A woman could leave a divorce with empty hands and nowhere to go.

Physical, emotional, sexual and financial abuse all raise the risk of suicide among women, and abuse by a husband remains one of its most significant causes. In the novel, Mrs. Bulging is pushed to that edge. Readers will see how Emily Murphy fought to change the unfair division of property in divorce.

Until 1929, women in Canada could not be appointed to the Senate or to many other high offices, and the constitution was read in ways that shut them out.

In 1927, five Alberta women decided to change that: Emily Murphy, Henrietta Muir Edwards, Irene Parlby, Louise McKinney and Nellie McClung. They asked Ottawa a simple constitutional question. Could a woman be appointed to the Senate of Canada?

Five women against a system run entirely by men. The novel shows how they won.