Critical Injuries — Joan Barfoot

Critical Injuries was on both the Globe and Mail`s and Toronto Star`s best books of the year lists published in December, 2001. Isla at 49 is reveling in second chances. Her first marriage ended horrifically, but her career thrives. Her two grown children are still reverberating from the shock of their father`s actions, but she has hopes for their recovery. And she has found in Lyle, her second husband, a man she both loves and trusts. Roddy is 17, restless and anxious to escape the confines of his small town. He and his best friend, dreaming of glittering, more glamorous city vistas, devise a plan that will deliver them there, and into the lives they have imagined. But in the moment of an ill-timed encounter, everything changes for both Isla and Roddy, and in the wake of that moment, each must reconstruct their lives on new and unexpected foundations. Critical Injuries is a stunning achievement, a novel of catastrophe, of hope and forgiveness, and of tenuous flashes of grace. (2001)