List $32.95

Written by Carol Shields - Audio book performed by Joan Allen - Unabridged Nonfiction - 6 CASSETTES - 7.5 hours

Publisher, Harper Audio (April 2002)

Listen to an audio clip NOTE: You will need RealPlayer Basic to listen. It's FREE !

For all of her days, Reta Winters has enjoyed the useful monotony of happiness: a loving family, good friends, growing success as a writer of light fiction, novels 'for summertime.' This placid existence cracks open one fearful day when her beloved oldest daughter, Norah, drops out of life to sit on a gritty street corner, silent but for the sign around her neck that reads 'GOODNESS.' Reta's search for what drove her daughter to such a desperate statement turns into an unflinching and surprisingly funny meditation on where we find meaning and hope.

Warmth, passion and wisdom come together in Carol Shields' remarkably supple prose. Unless, a harrowing but ultimately consoling story of one family's anguish and healing, proves her mastery of extraordinary fictions about ordinary life.

Carol Shields is the author of ten novels and two collections of short stories. She is the winner of the Pulitzer Prize for fiction in 1995 for The Stone Diaries, which was also shortlisted for the Booker Prize, and the Orange Prize for Larry's Party. Born and brought up in Chicago, Carol Shields has lived in Canada since 1957.