The Ladies’ Lending Library by Janice Kulyk Keefer

In the summer of 1963, the year of the sensational release of the film Cleopatra, the women of Ontario’s Kalyna Beach prepare for their annual end-of-season party. 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. But this is the summer when everything will change for the girls and women of Kalyna Beach, as innocence is exchanged for a new understanding of the possibilities open to them all.