"Reminiscent of the early novels of Miriam Toews, a suspenseful and poignant tale from an award-winning writer about a teenaged girl navigating a chaotic family in a close-knit small town. This novel starts exactly where the title does: with Francie, a panicked teenager who, we quickly realize, is holding a gun and desperately looking for a place to hide. From this startling opening, each new chapter sweeps us into the life of a separate character who has interacted with Francie-until gradually a full picture comes into view. We piece together what has brought Francie to her breaking point, and the sometimes deliberate, sometimes unwitting complicity of an entire community in what eventually transpires with the illicit gun. In Francie, award-winning writer Carrie Snyder realizes the great promise of her previous fiction, assembling a cast of unforgettable, tragi-comic characters who are equal parts compassion and cruelty, laughter and heartache. Here is a propulsive, multi-layered novel leavened with humour-and a memorable, affecting examination of the complex dynamics in a family that is breaking down and coming apart in front of the questioning, irrepressible girl at its centre."-- Provided by publisher.
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