Attachment Disorders: A Novel by Cecily Ross

Local author 

Harriet Brown dreams of finally finishing the novel she has been working on for decades. But menopause, motherhood, marriage, and midlife thwart her at every turn. When her 85-year-old, mother, Florence, goes missing on Christmas Eve, Hattie embarks on a frantic search for the elderly woman before she freezes to death. Meanwhile, Hattie’s daughter, Daphne, makes a shocking announcement that rocks Hattie’s world.

As Hattie navigates these crises, she tends to everyone’s needs but her own. Will Florence ever be found? When will Daphne come to her senses? Will Hattie’s autobiographical novel ever be published? And if it is, will her husband Charlie discover a secret she has kept for twenty-five years.

With humour and insight Attachment Disorders captures the indignities of aging, the absurdities of the writing life. It celebrates the complexities and, yes, disorder, of family relationships particularly those of mothers and daughters as they careen between enduring love and the inescapable frustrations of filial and maternal affection. At the heart of this story are the deep connections that unite us even when we are most alienated—the unquenchable spirit of the elderly, the buoyancy of the young, and the resilience of a middle-aged woman’s determination to prevail.

Author Bio

Cecily Ross is an editor and life-long writer, author of two books: a novel, The Lost Diaries of Susanna Moodie (HarperCollins Canada) and a memoir, Love in the Time of Cholesterol (Viking Canada, McGraw-Hill, U.S.). She has worked as an editor and award-winning writer at The Globe and Mail, Maclean’s, Harrowsmith, and The Peterborough Examiner. Her writing has appeared  in The New York Times, Chatelaine, ON Nature, Zoomer Magazine and Literary Review of Canada. Her poems have appeared in Canadian Literature and Dark Winter.