The Santa Rosa Trilogy

Wendy McGrath’s The Santa Rosa Trilogy, a decade in the making, is finally available in a complete collection. Join a young Canadian girl in mid-century Edmonton, Alberta, as she seeks answers to life’s questions and finds beauty in the mundane.

Santa Rosa: What is real when seen through the eyes of a child? When does the harshness of reality transform idyllic memories? The young narrator of Wendy McGrath's new book seeks the answers to these questions as she tries to make sense of the disintegration of her parents' marriage—a process echoed by the slow disintegration of their neighbourhood.

North East: A working-class couple living in 1960s Edmonton drift further apart while their young daughter tries to understand subtle shifts she senses taking place under the surface of her family and her neighbourhood. A visit to her grandparents’ farm in the country reveals the abject poverty the couple came to the city to escape, and the internecine marital strife that threatens to be born anew.

Broke City: Budding with creativity that her working-class parents do not understand, Christine questions her parents' fraught relationship, with alcoholism and implicit violence bubbling just under the surface of their marriage. Her insight turns beyond her family to her neighbourhood, nicknamed Packingtown, a community built on meat-packing plants and abattoirs, on death.