Daughter by Claudia Dey

To be loved by your father is to be loved by God.

So says Mona Dean playwright, actress, and daughter of a man famous for one great novel, a man whose needs and insecurities exert an inescapable pull and exact an immeasurable toll on the women of his family: Mona, her sister, her half sister, their mothers. His infidelity destroyed Mona's childhood, setting her in opposition to a stepmother who, though equally damaged, disdains her for being broken. Then, just as Mona is settling into her life as an adult and a fledgling artist, her father begins a new affair and takes her into his confidence. Mona delightspainfully, parasiticallyin this attention. When he inevitably confesses to his wife, Mona is cast as the agent of disruption, punished for her father's crimes and ejected from the family.

Mona's tenuous stability is thrown into chaos. Only when she suffers an incalculable lossone far deeper and more defining than family entanglements can she begin supplanting absent love with real love. Pushed to the precipice, she must decide how she wants to live, what she most needs to say, and the risks she will take to say it. (FromDoubleday Canada)

• The CBC Books fall reading list: 40 Canadian books to read this season
• Claudia Dey's new novelDaughterexplores despair and father-daughter relationships

Claudia Deyis a Torontoauthor, playwright and actor. She is also the co-designer of women's clothing brandHorses Atelier. She is also the author of the novelsStuntandHeartbreaker.Heartbreakerwas a finalist for the2019 Trillium Book Award.