Waiting for the Piano Tuner to Die

<p><strong><em>There are forces at play so simple natural and accidental that nobody can figure them out and see them coming.</em></strong></p><p><strong>Finalist Book of the Year 2003 Saskatchewan Book Awards</strong></p><p>In a small prairie town a teenage girl's unexpected pregnancy upends her family's quiet rhythms revealing the tender absurdities of love and loss. In shadowed ravines and forgotten sheds a child confronts the rats of her nightmares and the fragile bonds of friendship. A boy chasing turtles and salamanders discovers the razor-thin line between joy and oblivion while siblings navigate a mother's surreal transformation amid whispers of art betrayal and unspoken curses.</p><p>In <em>Waiting for the Piano Tuner to Die</em> Harriet Richards weaves ten haunting tales of ordinary lives cracked open by the extraordinary-heartaches spectral visitations forbidden desires and the quiet violence of human connection. From a woman's escape from a controlling lover to a daughter's reckoning with her mother's final romance these stories pulse with dark humour poignant insight and the raw poetry of the everyday exploring the ties that bind-and break-us in a world in which there's lots more sorrow flying around people's heads than there is joy.</p><p>Even though that sorrow may be heartbreaking and occasionally horrific the reader is constantly reminded with the quiet clear-eyed and sometimes mischievous irony of Harriet Richards's voice that in this world-in the least likely places-we may entertain angels unawares.</p><p></p>