Ann Eriksson’s first novel, Decomposing Maggie, is as heart-wrenching as it is life- affirming. When Maggie’s dying husband expresses his final wish—“take me to the forest ... let me lie down and decompose”—she chooses instead to ease his pain with an overdose of morphine.
Upon his death, Maggie falls into a mourning and a guilt so deep that she pushes away her grieving children, her closest friend and a way of life that sustained her for years. She turns to collecting kelp, sea lettuce, fragments of shells and bits of driftwood from the more isolated beaches of Vancouver.
