The Lavender Child - Harriet Richards

Winner: Best First Book, 1998 Saskatchewan Book Awards

A year in the lives, dreams, and awakenings of the Protheroe family . . .

Like most families, the Protheroes live together but dream in solitude: daydreams, night dreams, and the reveries of memory. Although much love connects them, they are alone within themselves, as are we all, each orbiting a unique inner sun coalescing from the raw material of birth and circumstance.

The much-anticipated arrival of a new baby, affectionally called the Bump, affects them all in both their dreams and waking life, but their expectations are upended when Dion is born brain-damaged. Despite that twist of fate, the new addition soon becomes a powerful influence on his parents, his five sisters, and his grandparents.

As the year unfolds, the reader travels through the minds of three generations: a group of wonderfully individual people who define family in a wholly original way.

"The Lavender Child reminds me of the best of Anne Tyler and Barbara Kingsolver, confident, witty, tender and smart . . . An auspicious debut, sassy, clear-eyed and beautifully told." - Sandra Birdsell