"This is the story of everything that happened after my friend Kit had a meltdown at school." Best friends Mila and Kit spend their days doing fun things: they go to the skate park, play Truth or Dare, and pet the neighborhood cats. Mila's favorite thing to do is draw her Shy Cat comics. But Kit's is probably eating afternoon snacks. The first time Kit went to Mila's house, he ate three bananas in a row without asking! Mila thinks rude is rude, but her mom says that sometimes, rude is just hungry. When Kit has a meltdown at school over a "best before" date, a bag of apples, and a dented can-Mila realizes there's something important she might have missed about her friend. And it all starts with their school's Stuff-the-Bus food drive challenge.

Meet Frederick Madrigal: the seventh son of a struggling woman on welfare who already had three sets of male twins spaced two years apart. A one-time child prodigy, Frederick was the subject of the benevolent index finger of God. While his older brothers ran wild, the sensitive and musically gifted Frederick began to sneak out of the house to sing for spare change in front of city bars and nightclubs, his repertoire learned from his mother's secret midnight singing. Through the intervention of a number of well intentioned benefactors, he ends up in a church choir, and from there, at the age of twelve, is drafted into a choir school in Toronto. He's happy to go, and leaves his mother and brothers behind without a thought. But just after his eighteenth birthday, in public, Everything Crashes Down, and in another miraculous escape, he chooses against his musical destiny. In mid-life, Frederick is deliverer of Canada Post mail; teacher of Voice; keeper of secrets; caretaker of his demented mother; lousy with dates. Still, it appears that everything is more or less satisfactory and under control ... until God once again starts pointing— but this time He seems a little cranky. The Madrigal is a work of literary fiction that explores the experience of solitude, the meaning of extraordinary talent, and the role of memory throughout our lives. Rather than a coming of age story, it is a "coming to terms story," as Frederick must let go of the unfulfilled expectations of his childhood and find deliverance from the tragic end-of-childhood events he believes he carries responsibility for. In doing so, Frederick brings a unique twist to a timeless journey of self-forgiveness and relationships with other.

Esa Withrod is a young woman struggling over recent events in her personal life-a failed first relationship and resulting pregnancy-as well as the legacy of her desolate upbringing. Eccentric and enigmatic, Esa's childhood has prepared her to deal with the world with endurance and resilience, but not with joy. She remains "mystified by kindness" and the friendship offered to her by her employer, Merle, a cartographer, and his partner, Daniel. The only bright spot in Esa's childhood was the three months she spent in a house by the sea with her grandmother in the Maritimes when she was seven years old. Searching for that safe haven she knew as a child, Esa returns to her grandmother's house to find that it is not possible to go back. Through a spring and summer of traumatic events in what has been her family's homestead, she discovers the love of family, friendship, and the best of what people in a small community have to offer each other in times of difficulty.