Bring Me One of Everything — Leslie Hall Pinder

Publisher's Weekly Starred Review.
Twenty years after her last novel, On Double Tracks, Pinder again shares her remarkable and unique prose gifts in this intensely-moving novel that explores the mysteries of the human heart and soul. Canadian Alix Purcell is at a crossroads, having left her lover and her job at a publishing house. An unusual opportunity presents itself when she's approached to write the libretto for an opera based on the life of Austin Hart, an anthropologist who took his own life in the mid-19th century shortly after his controversial decision to cut down an enormous stand of totem poles and have them shipped to museums. Having contemplated suicide herself, Purcell feels an affinity for her subject and a passionate desire to unravel the truth about what led him to such a dark place. Her quest coincides with a precipitous decline in her mother's health, which forces her to try to heal long-standing rifts between them. Pinder's ability to craft memorable lines (The roadway to my history was always under construction), only enhance her unflinching look at a woman's struggle to find both peace and professional satisfaction. Publisher s Weekly April 4, 2012