Nine Months in Vancouver

Taking place in Vancouver in 1922, Gin, Turpentine, Pennyroyal, Rue tells the story of four working-class sisters rebuilding their fragmented lives after the First World War. An absorbing exploration of themes like reproductive rights, bodily autonomy, and non-nuclear families, Christine Higdon’s novel is as pertinent today as it would have been a century ago.

The eldest sister at twenty-six, Georgina McKenzie can’t stand her handsome but dull husband, Victor Dunn, who is an unworthy replacement for Stevie Salter, the man she would have married if he hadn’t died in uncertain circumstances —“poisoned by gas or blown to bits or drowned in a muddy trench”— only six months into his service overseas. Two years Georgina’s junior, Isla carries on an affair with the policeman and rum-runner Llewellyn McFee, even though he’s married to her younger sister Morag. Sensual, charming...