Sunday, Apr. 23 | 2 PM
Forsyth Hall, St Albert Library
Free admission. Registration is required.
About The Shade Tree
A compelling and dramatic exploration of racial injustice and conflict set against the backdrop of some of America’s most turbulent historical events.
In The Shade Tree, the lives of two white sisters and a Black midwife are inextricably linked through a series of haunting tragedies, and the characters must make life-changing decisions about where their loyalties lie: with their biological families or with a greater moral cause.
From a Florida orange grove to the seat of power in Washington, DC, during the height of the civil rights movement, The Shade Tree tells a sweeping yet intimate story of racial discrimination and the human hunger for justice.
About Theresa Shea
Theresa Shea is the author of two novels. The Shade Tree won the 2022 Writers Guild of Alberta Georges Bugnet Fiction Award and the 2020 Guernica Prize (for best unpublished literary fiction).
Her debut novel, The Unfinished Child, was a finalist for the Georges Bugnet Award and the Alberta Readers’ Choice Award. A word of mouth bestseller, the book draws on her experience of coming to motherhood later in life and being surprised by genetic counselling and prenatal testing. It remains a book club favourite.
Theresa Shea was born in the US and moved to Canada in 1977. A graduate of McGill University, Queen’s University, and the University of Alberta, Shea is currently working on Dog Days of Planet Earth, a novel that examines animal rights and the climate crisis through the historical lens of the nuclear experiments conducted by the United States Government between 1945 and 1992. Shea lives in Edmonton.
Praise for The Shade Tree
“Some histories bear revisiting, and the world of the southern States under Jim Crow laws comes sharply into focus in Theresa Shea’s The Shade Tree, recent winner of Canada’s Guernica Literary Prize. A trio of women are key, as Shea probes the culture and character of a Florida town in the 1930s and 1940s.” — Alberta Views
“The Shade Tree is compellingly written and meticulously crafted, with short, tight chapters, richly drawn characters, a tautly woven narrative, and precise, evocative descriptive passages. It is an unsettling but rewarding read.” — The Temz Review