When Uncle Isaac moves back from L.A. to the quiet suburb of Thornhill, Ontario, to help his sister, Elaine Levine, care for her suddenly motherless grandchildren, he finds himself embroiled in even more neighborhood drama than he would like. Meanwhile, a nanny miles from her own family in the Philippines, cares for a young boy who doesn’t fit in at school. A woman in mid-life contends with the task of cleaning out the house in which she grew up, while her teenage son struggles with why his dad moved out. And down the street, a mother and her two daughters prepare for a wedding and transitions they didn’t see coming. This stunningly intimate collection of stories, which spans fifteen years in the lives of the Levine family, is an exquisite portrait of a Jewish community, the secular and religious families who inhabit it, and the tensions that exist there.
Sidura Ludwig grew up in the Jewish community of Winnipeg, Manitoba, the eldest of four siblings. She began writing seriously in her teens and won her first writing award and scholarship when she was eighteen years old for a short story submitted to the Canadian Authors’ Association short fiction contest. She went on to study English and creative writing at York University (Toronto) as an undergraduate student, and then completed a Masters in Journalism from Carleton University (Ottawa). Currently, Sidura is an MFA student at Vermont College of Fine Arts in the Writing for Children and Young Adults program.
Visit Sidura’s website here.
You Are Not What We Expected was just released on May 5th. To purchase, please go to Amazon, Indigo Books, or Independent Booksellers.
Please RSVP for this book talk with Justin at Justin@hcrj.org.