janice kulyk keefer

From the award-winning author of Honey and Ashes and Thieves, The Ladies' Lending Library is a richly evocative story for anyone who has longed for the heady days of bygone summers and the risky promises of change.

During the languorous summer of 1963 - before the Beatles, before JFK - the women of Ontario's Kalyna Beach anticipate the long holiday season ahead... With their husbands away in the city, the wives break up monotonous days of children and chores by gathering together for their weekly 'lending library' - an excuse to exchange 'daring' novels and the latest gossip. As heavy waves pound the sand and the sun beats down on their beach-cottage steps, gin is poured, secrets are shared and they become ever closer. Meanwhile, their adolescent daughters are making discoveries and forging intimacies of their own...

Consumed by thoughts of marriage and sex, by memories of the past and longing for the future, innocence gradually gives way to new understanding. And as the summer gradually draws to an end, the women of Kalyna Beach come to realize that nothing will be quite the same again...