Wrecked Upon This Shore deals with life’s most significant tests: loving and dying, broken relationships, the drive to heal and the impulse to be whole.

At the novel’s centre is Pearl: wild, charismatic, and damaged. We follow her through the eyes of her adult son Stephen, and also from the viewpoint of Mouse, the girl she fell in love with as a teenager. Thirty years old when Pearl is diagnosed with terminal cancer, Stephen is in danger of foundering. Pearl’s cancer becomes a crucible with the power not only to destroy but also to re-forge relationships.

Kate Story is a writer and theatre artist who was born and raised in St. John's, Newfoundland and Labrador. Uncanny occurrences were not unheard-of growing up in the house on the Southside Road built by Kate's great-great grandfather. Having fled to the mainland at sixteen, Kate keeps coming home to see family, do the occasional performance work, and get the occasional fit of the shudders. Kate lives in Peterborough/Nogojiwanong, Ontario, where the shudders are fuel for the writing and performance work.

Previous novels include Blasted, Wrecked Upon This Shore, This Insubstantial Pageant, and the YA fantasy duology Antilia.

Kate's fiction has won the Sunburst Award's honourable mention, been a CBC Literary Award finalist, and has appeared in World Fantasy and Aurora Award-winning collections. Kate is also a recipient of the Ontario Arts Foundation's K.M. Hunter Artist Award for work as a theatre writer, performer, and creator.

Kate Story's profile page

Bittersweet, raunchy, touching, and, at times, very funny, Kate Story’s “Wrecked Upon this Shore” makes a distinct contribution to this body of literature.