ANN ERIKSSON

Decomposing Maggie

ISBN: 0-88801-283-7

Turnstone Press 2003

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If you denied your loved one's last dying wish, would you blame them for haunting you?

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Maggie Cooper has lost sight of the living. Three years after her husband Peter's death, Maggie is estranged from her daughter and removed from her son. She wears Peter's one remaining item of clothing - a spattered sweatshirt - and spends more than the occasional night sleeping in her car, away from the memories of their once-shared bed. Obsessed with making the perfect basket to contain her late husband's ashes, Maggie spends her days gathering kelp at the local beach and weaving in her sunroom. Now the island property where she and Peter had first built their lives together has been sold and Maggie has no choice but to return there to pack what belongings remain and face the ghosts of the past.

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Praise for Decomposing Maggie:

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Grief is as individual as a fingerprint. Unblinking and original. Maggie's mourning is absolutely her own - and every reader will identify with it. - Katherine Ashenburg, author of the Mourner's Dance

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... a luxuriously visual rendering ... Eriksson's writing grows rich as the story develops ... with moments of gorgeous and powerful depiction.- Canadian Literature

 

Ann Eriksson's first novel, Decomposing Maggie, is as heart-wrenching as it is life-affirming. Karolle Walls, Herizons Magazine