Big Shadow
Marilyn Stanley
, Margo Beredjiklian
, Noelle Walsh
, Cassandra Schiemann
, Andrea Pole
, Barry Kazimer
, Mary Therrien
, Beth Dekoker
, Sarah Schwartz
, Linda Leitch
, Jude Castillo
, Reilly Robson
, Elisha Lazarski
, Elizabeth Obermeyer
, Andrea Gillespie
, Sara Campbell
, Trish Bowering
, PATRICIA SOPEL
, Sandra Furlotte
, Jenn George
, Madison Hendricks
, Pamela Roberts Griffith
, Agnes Marshall
, P. Thompson
, Debra Fisher
, Joshua Lewis
, Ashley Raskovsky
, Natasa Ilic
, Ariane Béland
, Elmira Olson
, Deb Philippon
, Margaret Lindo
, Leila Grobel
, Shayla Bradley
, Janice Cournoyer
, Kim Cappellina
, joy mills
, Geordan Patterson
, Zara Garcia-Alvarez
, Caleb Nault
, diana kirkwood
, Darlene Jilks
, Carl Scott
, Heather Belliveau
, C. Ray
, Marin Beck
, Darlene Foster
, Paula Ritchie
, Elaine Baptie
, Maggie Keating
, Maureen Brownlee
, Rubyna Jinnah
, Charles Leblanc
, Deana Bueley
, Susan Terendy
, Rosa Cross
, Rodney Cross
, Denise Duvall
, Benita Hartwell
, Paula Adam
, Christopher Evans
, Randi Ann Doll
, Heather Norris
, Jessica Gilbert
, Alanna King
, Karen Nordrum
, Gwynn Scheltema
, Diana Dichard
, Courtney Tucker
, Mary Campbell
, Colleen Coco Collins
editor@49thShelf.com
In an unnamed town in the summer of 1998, Judy is an isolated and inexperienced teenager on the cusp of adulthood struggling to craft an identity for herself—especially as the artist she wants to be.
There is little help around her. Her only friends are increasingly obsessed with a cultish belief in a coming "Big Shadow." Her mother is afraid of life and finds solace in TV shows. At her lowest point, Judy meets Maurice Blunt, a visiting summer poetry class professor who is a "has-been" fixture of the 1970s NYC punk music scene. Judy believes Maurice—a man more than twice her age desperately seeking lost adoration—is the ticket out of her current life. Soon, she begins taking secret weekend trips to visit him.
Judy's visits to his apartment in New York bring hopes of belonging to the city's cultural world and making a living as a video artist. With each trip and frustrated promise, however, she feels the creeping realization that there is a price to pay for her golden ticket entry into this insular and moribund scene. Judy must navigate the shifting power dynamics with her aging gatekeeper and the possibility of building an early adult identity alone.
An affecting novel of psychological nuance and dark humour, Big Shadow explores the costs of self-deceit, fandom, and tenuous ambitions, exposing the lies we’ll tell ourselves and the promises we'll make to edge closer to what we want… or what we think we want.
