On Huron's Shore

Marilyn Gear Pilling brilliantly displayed her competence in describing women in My Nose is a Gherkin Pickle Gone Wrong (1996). Showing them “in all their nakedness ... the voice is neither sentimental nor fussy, the prose spare and fresh” (Quill & Quire). She continued her explorations of Canadian women in The Roseate Spoonbill of Happiness (2002), a collection of stories shortlisted for the Upper Canada writing award by Leon Rooke, Greg Gatenby and Sandra Martin: “Pilling has a confident, quirky voice and her stories range in tone from the heartwarming to the humorous. The domes- tic landscape is familiar, but this book unlocks the strangeness be- neath the familiar. In every one of these stories, the unusual and the unexpected give a perspective that enlarges the understanding and leaves the reader wanting more.”

Since 2002, Pilling has produced five books of poetry, and now, with On Huron’s Shore, she has returned to fiction with a collection of linked stories about mothers, daughters, and sisters, set in the landscape of the Huron County of the mid-fifties juxtaposed with the Huron County of today. Gear Pilling takes a humourous and sensual look at the female members of one family as it was then, as it is now.