Fake It So Real takes on the fallout from a punk-rock lifestyle–the future of “no future”–and its effects on the subsequent generations of one family. In June of 1983, Gwen, a gnarly Nancy Spungeon lookalike, meets Damian, the enigmatic leader of a punk band. Seven years and two unplanned pregnancies later, Damian abandons Gwen, leaving her to raise their two daughters, Sara and Meg, on her own.

The fourteen chapters that make up this novel usher Gwen and her daughters through five decades, haunted by Damian’s ghost. Fuelled by vodka and scrappy determination, Gwen balances a responsibility to her daughters with her narcissistic, self-destructive tendencies. Sara and Meg scramble through adolescence and enter adulthood walking the line between selfishness and self-sacrifice, attempting to avoid their parents’ mistakes, all the while making a whole new set of mistakes of their own.

In the voices of Gwen, Sara, and Meg, these chapters weave a raw and honest tapestry of family life as told from the underbelly, focused on the grey area between right and wrong, the idea that we are all equally culpable and justified in our actions, and the pain and ecstasy that accompany a life lived authentically.

Fake It So Real can be pre-ordered from Harbour Publishing, Munro’s Books, or at your local independent bookstore.