Since women started working in the trades in the 1970s, very little has been published about their experiences. In this provocative and important book, Kate Braid tells the story of how she became a carpenter in the face of skepticism and discouragement. In 1977 when Braid was broke and out of work, her male friends encouraged her to apply as a labourer on a construction site on Pender Island, off the coast of British Columbia. She’d never heard of a woman doing this kind of work, but she ...

--- Semifinalist, 2025 Autumn House Nonfiction Prize ---England, 2015. Madelyn dreads telling her young children about her mother, who died by suicide decades earlier. But when her child asks about skin tone and eye color, she’s compelled to share the painful truth.A Cantonese village, 1895. Emigrating to America seems inevitable for teenage Song, whose family is starving during a drought. His grandmother tells him about Ch...

In 1838, thirteen thousand Cherokee were forced to leave their homeland in the Southeast and walk 900 miles to present-day Oklahoma. Hunger, cold, fatigue, and disease threatened their very survival. Their grueling relocation trek-the Trail of Tears-takes on new immediacy and meaning with this stunning work of fiction. Maritole loses not only her home and her settled life in North Carolina, but also many of the people closest to her. A chorus of voices joins hers to vividly recreate the tr...