Cricket in a Fist

In this psychologically sophisticated novel, Lewis burrows into the inner sanctum of a family whose collective memory is purposefully vanishing. Agatha and Jasmine Winter, children of a flashy self-help guru who preaches “willing amnesia,” seek truth in the tangled strands of past and present. On the anniversary of their mother’s accident, they are thrown together in a struggle to break free of the burden of family silence — their grandmother’s and great-grandmother’s experiences of the Holocaust, their mother’s betrayal, and their own secrets, lies, and denials. Yet, enmeshed among the filaments, there is hope and possibility.

NAOMI K. LEWIS was born in England and grew up in Ottawa. Her stories have been published in Fiddlehead, New Quarterly, Antigonish Review, Prairie Fire, and Grain. “The Guiding Light,” a selection from an early draft of this novel, won the 2007 Fiddlehead Fiction Prize. Lewis now lives in Edmonton, AB, where she works as an editor for Legacy Magazine.

Published by Goose Lane Editions