Every Time We Say Goodbye

A New Face of Fiction novel from the beloved writer Jamie Zeppa. A crossover literary-commercial novel of generations, Every Time We Say Goodbye is both heartbreaking and hopeful. As eight-year-old Dawn waits for her father early one autumn morning, at the front door of her grandparents' house, Jamie Zeppa immediately draws us into the tangled, tumultuous story of the Turner family of Sault Ste. Marie. Dawn and her younger brother, Jimmy, are the youngest generation of Turners and their unpredictable father, Dean, is finally coming to bring them to live with him in a new house with his new wife. Dawn calls this "Day One" — as in the beginning of her real life — and she is full of optimism. Her grandparents, Frank and Vera, however, are less so, since they know very well the ups and downs of their dear, but unreliable, son's behaviour. From here, we travel back two generations into the past to the Great Depression and to the childhood of granddad Frank and his sister, Grace, as Jamie reveals how the family's roots became weakened, and how the instability that was seeded then begins to ripple down through the family. Rich with mysteries, plot twists, a paternity question, broken promises and in the end, some mending of hearts, Every Time We Say Goodbye explores what it means to leave, to be absent, to die; what connects us and what drives us apart. The Turners are not a small extended family, but they are so fractured that each branch of them is isolated, and the children are essentially orphaned. Jamie paints a tender, perceptive and detailed portrait of this unconventional, though not entirely dysfunctional, family. From the Hardcover edition.