It is early autumn, 1997 and Kate Thuringer is back in her hometown to help her college-age daughter settle into her new life. A professional photographer, Kate has not visited Montreal for almost a decade; has avoided one particular street for some twenty-seven years. Most of those years, she has lived quietly with her husband and children in Edmonton. Before her marriage, however, Kate survived a turbulent year in which Québécois terrorists kidnapped a British diplomat and murdered a politician.

 

The middle-aged Kate is obsessed with the past, particularly with the memory of a poor francophone music student with whom she, a privileged anglophone, had been involved during the historic Octo­ber Crisis. Though totally apolitical, the young Kate had unexpectedly found herself the victim of a social and political drama whose permutations would impact her entire life.

 

Back in Montreal almost three decades later, she is plunged into a mid-life crisis, struggling to reconcile her youthful dreams with her stale marriage, her empty nest, her quickly approaching fiftieth birthday. The House on Selkirk Avenue is a lyrical, evocative novel about obsessive love, aging, and the impact of political events on innocent people’s lives.