The Ladies' Lending Library

In August of 1963, the year of the sensational release of Cleopatra, the women of KalynaBeach prepare for their annual end-of-season party. Sonia Martyn and her four daughters are part of a group of first-generation Ukrainian Canadians, newly minted middle-class families claiming their small part of the cottage-country dream. With their husbands away in the city all week, the women's days are ruled by the predictable rhythms of children and chores, lightened by the 'racy' books they trade amongst themselves and by their Friday afternoon gatherings for gin and gossip, heightened by their obsession with the deliciously scandalous love affair between Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton. Their tightly bound world is also straining with its own dramas and secrets. Sonia, a former fashion mode, mourns the death of her mother and fights with her difficult eldest daughter. Elusive Nadia, the wife of a millionaire, longs for a life she cannot have. Sharp-tongued, sophisticated Sasha plays a dangerous game in both challenging and shoring up the traditional Ukrainian community and its defining values. And for adolescent Laura, her sisters and their friends, the rifts and fissures threatening the once-impregnable 'world of the mothers' prompt a startling series of betrayals and discoveries. For this is the summer when everything will change for the girls and women of Kalyna Beach, as innocence gives way to a sense of larger possibilities open to them all. In The Ladies' Lending Library, Janice Kulyk Keefer creates a radiant and beautifully told portrait of women caught between countries, cultures and aspirations.