Downloading Gin, Turpentine, Pennyroyal, Rue: A Novel

Four working-class Vancouver sisters, still reeling from the impact of World War I and the pandemic that stole their only brother, are scraping by but attempting to make the most of the exciting 1920s. Gin, Turpentine, Pennyroyal, Rue is a love story — but like all love stories, it’s complicated …

Morag is pregnant; she loves her husband. Georgina can’t bear hers and dreams of getting an education. Harriet-Jean, still at home with her opium-addicted mother, is in love with a woman. Isla’s pregnant too — and in love with her sister’s husband. Only one soul knows about Isla’s pregnancy, and it isn’t the father. When Isla resorts to a back-street abortion and nearly dies, Llewellyn becomes hellbent on revenge. But can revenge lead to anything but disaster for a man like Llew — a policeman tangled up in running rum to Prohibition America?

Gin, Turpentine, Pennyroyal, Rue is immersed in the complex political and social realities of the 1920s and, not-so ironically, of the 2020s: love, sex, desire, police corruption, abortion, addiction, and women wanting more. Beautifully written, with a loveable cast of characters, this novel is a tender account of love that cannot be acknowledged, of loss and regret, risk and defiance, abiding friendship, and the powerful bonds of chosen family.

About Christine Higdon

Christine's new novel, GIN, TURPENTINE, PENNYROYAL, RUE, launches September 2023.

Her first book, THE VERY MARROW OF OUR BONES (ECW Press), won the Foreword INDIES Editor's Choice Prize - Fiction, in 2018. Her story, "Courage My Love," was long-listed for the CBC 2020 short fiction award. She won Silver at the 2019 National Magazine Awards for her story "A Prayer for Ursula in Open D" published in the Malahat Review. Her short essay, “Because We’re Not at the Ocean,” was shortlisted for the 2016 CBC Creative Nonfiction Prize. “Promoted to Glory,” appeared in Plenitude. The New Quarterly published “Dysplastic Man!” in the Winter 2018 issue #145. Daughter of a Newfoundlander and a British Columbian, Christine was born in rural BC, and now makes her home in Mimico, Ontario, where, when she is not working, editing, reading, or writing, she hooks rugs and worries about the bees.