A yellowed newspaper clipping about a recently released prisoner who saves a drowning boy triggers a wrenching journey into memory for middle-aged Ruth Callis, forcing her to confront the events of her past and, ultimately, her own act of forgiveness.
Growing up in the far North, Ruth is attracted to the young missionaries working in her town and becomes increasingly involved in the activities of their evangelical fundamentalist church group. Much to the dismay of her long-suffering parents, she turns into an adolescent zealot.
When Ruth moves south to go to university, life becomes less simple, answers less obvious. She becomes involved with Ian, an older man who is unemployed, alcoholic, obsessive, and increasingly volatile. What at first seems exotic becomes more and more frightening. The devastating relationship forces Ruth to re-examine her own twisted ideologies.
A book of rare emotional honesty, Released reveals the selfishness of the so-called righteous, the intense cruelty of human beings, and their divine capability for real love.
A small-town Bill Clinton look-alike agonizes over
whether to accept a tempting offer from the CIA; an
obese young woman finds love in a prairie cafe; a
lonely child encounters a supernatural being; a teenage
girl struggles with a sexual predator as she hitchhikes
on the autobahn; a newly divorced man tries to return
his adopted children; two brothers and a sister take
their father's ashes back to the North, trying to
make it over the ice road before break-up.
These are just a few of the stories from Margaret
Macpherson's remarkable debut collection, Perilous
Departures. Perilous though they may be, all of these
stories represent a departure from the ordinary and
all celebrate the chaotic splendour of life. Each
story, in its individuality, illuminates the path
that leads to home, but home isn't always what we
expect, and paths in Macpherson's world are rarely
straight and narrow.
With compelling exuberance, Margaret Macpherson entices
her readers to leave behind their familiar comforts
and join her on a unpredictable journey of hazardous
navigations. In Perilous Departures, the risks are
many, the rewards transformative.
