Becalming

by Aga Maksimowska

Overview

Gosia feels stalled in her life, but a family trip opens her eyes to the life she has … and the life she wants.

Gosia, a high school chemistry teacher, travels to her native Poland to visit her estranged father. Back in Canada, meanwhile, her father-in-law — who has been more of a dad to her than her own — is dying of cancer. Away from her routine, Gosia questions everything in her life, including her long-term boyfriend, Peter. She feels stuck in the terrifying time of early adulthood, in her first grown-up job while managing student debt, monogamy, and existential dread. Is this really it, she wonders?

Gosia’s time in Poland gives her the chance to examine her life, and she finds herself pulled homeward to Canada, where she faces the fact that Peter’s father — like her own — is far from perfect. Can she love despite betrayal? Can she find hope in her fiery, complex love for Peter? Is there something more to this life that she didn’t even realize she had?

Becalming tells the story of two people realizing that happily ever after is not something to be but something to continue to explore, through adversity and outrage, tragedy and inspiration, and love.

A RARE MACHINES BOOK

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781459756052
Publisher:	Rare Machines
Publication date:	04/14/2026
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	336

About the Author

Aga Maksimowska is a writer whose debut novel Giant, about premature sexual development and the fall of Communism in Poland, was shortlisted for the Toronto Book Award. Her writing has appeared in Polish[ed]: Poland Rooted in Canadian Fiction, Brick, the Globe and Mail, and others. Becalming is her second novel. She lives in Toronto.

Aga Maksimowska is a writer whose debut novel Giant, about premature sexual development and the fall of Communism in Poland, was shortlisted for the Toronto Book Award. Her writing has appeared in Polish[ed]: Poland Rooted in Canadian Fiction, Brick, the Globe and Mail, and others. Becalming is her second novel. She lives in Toronto.

Read an Excerpt

Becalming

Waves slap the sides of the boat, sails snap energetically, Mama captains. “Look at you,” I say into the wind, my glasses sprayed with seawater, “so cool, hand on the rudder, in charge.”

She grins. “Tiller,” she says. “The rudder’s in the water. This is the tiller.” I knew Mama sailed in her Before Times, before she married Tata (he was the athlete), before she had me and Kasia, before they divorced, before she left for Canada in 1986. But I had no idea she was this good. That she could move through water so effortlessly. Not any water, but the sea.

This isn’t Toronto Harbour; this is the Baltic, an arm of the Atlantic, the world’s youngest sea. It’s also the world’s largest brackish sea, which means if we were stranded here, its water would hydrate us. But, since the Soviets and the Brits dumped their chemical weapons here during the war and mustard gas started leaking out, it would have to be a real emergency before I took a gulp. The surface of the sea is pocked with ferries, cargo and naval ships, NATO cruisers, Russian submarines. Even in 2007, these are infested waters, not just with dangerous shipwrecks and abandoned weapons, but with spies and allies. Oftentimes it’s difficult to know who’s who.

And here’s Mama, in her fifties, not on public transit but on a sailboat, gaze fixed on the horizon, speeding toward land. The land in question is a narrow sliver between the Baltic and the Vistula Lagoon, Kaliningrad Oblast (a triangle of Russia that shouldn’t be there) a few kilometres to the east, Gdańsk to the west, Stockholm due north.

“I could do this forever,” Mama says dreamily.

I’m about to say, Why don’t you? but I know better than to say stupid things.

One cannot do what one wants. We can enjoy each other’s company on this magical summer’s day without expounding impossibilities.

Mama is light and agile as she yanks ropes and swings the sail over to the other side, confident and calm as she commands me to adjust my position. I am in awe of her. It’s like watching an entirely different human, someone I hardly know. It’s unimaginable to me that this person would have chosen to sit in a classroom, teach English, work in a dreary high school, then a slightly less dreary university in Poland, only to wind up looking after Canadian children and their pets in the diaspora. She’s my mother, the only parent I’ve ever actually known, and yet, at this moment, I feel like I don’t know her at all. I am so mesmerized by her every move that it takes me a second to realize that suddenly everything falls utterly still. No wind, no waves. It’s like we’ve entered a kind of mystical, weatherless, atmosphereless patch of sea.

“Now what?” I say.

“Oars or motor,” Mama says, “or we sit and enjoy the calm.”

“I enjoy motoring, thanks,” I say.

Mama smirks. “I know you do. Always on the move. God forbid you relax. Plus motors are not allowed in a regatta. We wait for the wind.”

“We’re not in a regatta. Look!” I point ashore. “Fried fish and cold beer await our speedy return.”

It’s a strange feeling, to sit there, with no real danger of sinking and yet making no progress whatsoever. Somewhat like my current life. Nothing particularly wrong with it — great boyfriend, permanent job, downtown apartment — but entirely dull and unsatisfying. A sudden panic settles on me like a burn. Without the wind, the sun is searing. It stings instantly. Now what, I repeat in my head, while Mama looks at me expectantly. Ease takes work, and I am so terrible at it. She expects conversation, while I expect adventure.

“It’s terrible about Peter’s dad,” Mama says. “Such a nice man.”

I grimace. Of course it’s terrible. But my boyfriend’s father is old. More terrible when you’re young. What else is there to say? “Nice man,” I repeat. “Is he?”

Mama shrugs, fiddles with a rope. “Who’s to say. Seems nice.” I think about the things that make someone, the way we seem, the way we want to be, the way we are. How much control we have over how we were made, how we turned out. I’d die if someone called me “nice.” I love Phil, but he isn’t nice. I try biting off a hangnail but yank too hard and it starts to bleed. I should have had my nails done before this trip. I suck my thumb, willing the little wound closed.

Editorial Reviews

A penetrating portrayal of the deceptions we tell ourselves and others, the stories we cling to, and the stories we try to change. Drawn with tight and energetic prose, Maksimowska’s wonderfully complicated characters made me wince and laugh and nod in recognition as they struggle with the impossibility of ever truly knowing others or themselves.

author of The Sea Between Two Shores Tanis Rideout

Becalming is a richly layered tale of a daughter untangling the myths and silences of her family’s past. Wry, intimate, and evocative, the novel spans oceans and decades to ask how memory survives translation — and what we owe to the stories we tell ourselves to stay afloat.

author of Rental House Weike Wang