The Smallest Objective

Excavating for buried treasure in her family home, the narrator of The Smallest Objective is limited to only a few clues: a lantern slide, a faded recipe book, a postcard from Mexico, a nugget of fool's gold. Each one is an object belonging to an early- to mid-20th century Montreal Jewish personality - a celebrated hustler, a Lithuanian botanist, a young woman of independent spirit. As the narrator struggles with her mother's failing memory and final decline, unexpected secrets come into focus and a legacy of willed forgetfulness is revealed.