Women Talking

A FINALIST FOR THE GOVERNOR GENERAL'S LITERARY AWARD: A transformative and necessary work--as completely unexpected as it is inspired--by the award-winning author of the bestselling novels All My Puny Sorrows and A Complicated Kindness. On a quiet June morning in 2009, August Epp sits alone in the hayloft of a barn, anxiously bent over his notebook. Soon eight women--ordinary grandmothers, mothers and teenagers--will climb the ladder into the loft, and the day's true task will begin. This task will be both simple and subversive: August, like the women, is a traditional Mennonite, and he has been asked to record a secret conversation.

Thus begins this spellbinding novel from award-winning writer Miriam Toews. Gradually, as we hear the women's vivid voices console, tease, admonish, regale and debate each other, we piece together the reason for the gathering: they have forty-eight hours to make a life-altering choice on behalf of all the women and children in the colony.

Acerbic, funny, tender, sorrowful and wise, Women Talking is composed of equal parts human love and deep anger. It explores the expansive, timeless universe of thinking and feeling about women--and men--in our contemporary world.