So Much Love

Book excerpt: Finalist for the Amazon Canada First Novel Award A Globe and Mail Best Book A Quill & Quire Best Book of the Year Olive Kitteridge meets Room and The Lovely Bones in this stunning first novel about the unexpected reverberations the abduction of a young woman has on a small community. When Catherine Reindeer mysteriously vanishes from the parking lot outside the restaurant where she works, an entire community is shattered. Her fellow waitress now sees danger all around her. Her mother desperately seeks comfort in saying her name over and over again. Her professor thinks of her obsessively. Her husband refuses to give up hope that she will one day come home. As we move back and forth between those who knew Catherine intimately and those who barely knew her at all, So Much Love reveals how an unexpected disappearance can overturn everything for those left behind. But at the heart of the novel is Catherine's own surprising journey of resilience and recovery. When, after months of unimaginable horror, a final devastating loss forces her to make a bold decision, she is unprepared for everything that follows. Woven throughout Catherine's story are glimpses of a local poet who was murdered decades earlier, a woman whose work becomes a lifeline for Catherine during her darkest hours. A riveting novel that explores the complexity of love and the power of stories to shape our lives, So Much Love confirms Rebecca Rosenblum's reputation as one of the most gifted and distinctive writers of her generation.