"Nadia Bozak is a tremendous talent." - Zoe Whittall, author of The Fake
Once a rising star of indie rock, Kate is now a middle-aged single mom living far out of the spotlight. Everything changes for her when an unprecedented heat wave and a stolen car set off a chain of events that threaten to upend her new, peaceful life. Fired from her job, separated from her children, and overwhelmed by public shaming, Kate must navigate the cold realities of the child welfare and family court systems while struggling to stay cool in an increasingly unbearable world.
Determined to rebuild, Kate finds herself forging new connections and fostering a sense of community - something she hasn't felt since her music career ended in disaster more than a decade before. As Kate finds a new voice, she makes her way back to her children and her love of music, and steps closer to reconciling with her former bandmate and arch-rival: her little sister.
If building community is Kate's way of reckoning with the mistakes of her past, can it also be a way to mitigate the deeper, more urgent issues and structural injustices that threaten our future? A propulsive and incisive novel about Kate, a washed-up rock star and frazzled mother of two, whose precarious situation is made more so when her idling car is stolen - with her young daughter still in it - and all her life choices, both big and small, are opened up to the scrutiny of the internet, her community, and ultimately, herself.
Nadia Bozak lives in Ottawa with her family and is a faculty member in the Department of English at Carleton University. Fret is her fifth book.
Sales and Market Bullets
• A NOTE FROM THE EDITOR, PIA SINGHAL: This is a really propulsive book, with a lot of depth to it. There's a small, quickly resolved thriller aspect that gives this book a very commercial and engaging lean, but that mystery breaks open an entire world of questions about climate change and personal responsibility. It has that quality of one's worst nightmares coming to pass that makes Ashley Audrain's books so compelling - but the book is worth reading alone for its depictions of financial precarity, the oppressive heat of a city summer, feeling like one should have more to show for one's life than one does, and how acceptance and surrender are not the same thing."
• PRAISE FOR NADIA BOZAK:
• "Nadia Bozak's coming-of-age snapshots are a gentle reminder of all that's immediate and fleeting. Wistful, distinct, and full of life." - Iain Reid, author of I'm Thinking of Ending Things, on Thirteen Shells
• "El Niño is a blazing novel about desperation and courage, survival and death, borders and barriers of all sorts and what it takes to break through. Nadia Bozak's characters are fierce, brave, and haunting. Stylistically brazen and wildly suspenseful, this novel charges and snaps, sinks its teeth in, and doesn't let go." - Lisa Moore, author of Caught, on El Niño
