Little Sister

Thunderstorms are rolling across the summer sky. Every time one breaks, Rose Bowan loses consciousness and has vivid, realistic dreams about being in another woman’s body.

Is Rose merely dreaming? Or is she, in fact, inhabiting a stranger? Disturbed yet entranced, she sets out to discover what is happening to her. Meanwhile her mother is in the early stages of dementia, and has begun to speak for the first time in decades about Rose’s sister, Ava, who died young.

In Barbara Gowdy’s latest novel, one woman fights to help someone she has never met, and to come to terms with a death for which she always felt responsible. The result is an impassioned exploration of the limits of the human mind, the devastating power of empathy, and the fierce bonds of motherhood and sisterhood.