Big Shadow
Noelle Walsh
, Marissa Yip-Young
, Amanda Schempp
, Vanessa S
, PATRICIA SOPEL
, Linda Leitch
, Penny Gilman
, Deana Bueley
, Margo Beredjiklian
, Mathew Webb
, Sandra Furlotte
, Joshua Lewis
, Andrea Pole
, Marilyn Stanley
, Shannon Holmes
, Barry Kazimer
, Ed Gilman
, Paula Adam
, LJ Law
, Sarah Schwartz
, Joe Mitchell
, Claire Gear
, Cassandra Schiemann
, Tyler Webb
, Andy Holmes
, Natasa Ilic
, Julie Kaniak
, Mary-Esther Lee
, Lauren Seal
, Shayla Bradley
, Dani Kat
, Mary Therrien
, Agnes Marshall
, Trish Bowering
, Andrea Gillespie
, Deb Philippon
, Jennifer Morse
, Hoda Montazeri
, Patricia Johnson
, Ariane Béland
, Ellen Clarke
, Laurie Burns
, Lisa Ostrowski
, Crystal Inwood
, Gabrielle Wolfe
, Remi Gunn
, Shawna Moodie
, P. Thompson
, Laura Peters
, Ken Gilmour
, Heather Rose
, Paula Ritchie
, Cynthia Heinrichs
, Charles Leblanc
, Heather Belliveau
, Brenda Vaccarello
, Christine Lion
, Elizabeth Ivanovich
, Rachel Lutz
, Mary Danieli
, Huguette Lemieux
, Susan Fitzgerald
, Derek Davidson
, Benita Hartwell
, Maria Mclean
, Denise Duvall
, Rosa Cross
, Janet Meisner
, Rodney Cross
, Donald Forsythe
, Kim Fenton
, Margaret McKay
, Maureen Brownlee
, Leslie Vermeer
, Kim Cappellina
, Robin Leighton
, diana kirkwood
, Lynn Bechtel
, Alice Meems
, Janice Cournoyer
, Lisa Mallia
, Stacy Stafford
, Karen Kendrick
, Melissa Kohlman
, C. Ray
, Karen Nordrum
, Debra Fisher
, Debbie Youngman
, Melissa Poremba
, Vivian Thorgeirson
, Elaine Baptie
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.
