In the Misleading Absence of Light

“Winner, Jubilee Short Fiction Award, Canadian Author’s Association

Winner, Fiction Award/First Book Award/City of Regina Award; Saskatchewan

Book Awards”In this powerful, award-winning first collection of stories, Joanne Gerber uses intricate, visually-detailed images to examine the lives of people having to come to terms with difficult circumstances in their lives. Their spiritual considerations which challenge comfortable orthodoxy defy the reader to remain emotionally uninvolved. A young woman struggles to make sense of her terminal illness, in a brilliant examination of a person’s crisis of faith, as well as the brilliant use of visual images, from both nature and famous paintings. Another story presents a man who is suicidal after the wedding of two very good friends, but not for the reason we’d expect. The entire second section of the book is autobiographical, and contains linked stories concerning a man with mental illness and the havoc that is wreaked in his family because of it, and because of the religious faith that keeps them bound together in a deadly situation.””The collection is beautifully written and the images linger in the mind long after reading. Judging from her first effort here, Gerber has a promising career ahead of her.””-Globe and Mail