Irma Voth

Description

The stifling, reclusive life of nineteen-year-old Irma Voth, recently married, and more recently deserted is turned on its head when a film crew moves in to make a movie about the strict religious community, in which she lives. When she clashes with her domineering father over her work as a translator for the crew, Irma is set on a path towards something that feels like freedom. Along with her younger sister Aggie, wise beyond her teenage years, she hits the road and flees to the city. Upheld only by their love for each other and their smart wit, the sisters finally gain the distance to understand the tragedy that has their family in its grip. Irma Voth delves into the complicated factors that set us on the road to self-discovery and how we can sometimes find the strength to endure the really hard things that happen. It also asks that most difficult of questions: How do we forgive? And most importantly, how do we forgive ourselves?

Miriam Toews is the author of seven novels: Summer of My Amazing Luck, A Boy of Good Breeding, A Complicated Kindness,The Flying Troutmans, Irma Voth, All My Puny Sorrows, and Women Talking, and one work of non-fiction, Swing Low: A Life. She is a winner of the Governor General's Award for Fiction, the Libris Award for Fiction Book of the Year, the Rogers Writers' Trust Fiction Prize, and the Writers Trust Marian Engel/ Timothy Findley Award. She lives in Toronto.