The Gravitational Pull of Bernice Trimble

Iris Trimble is trying to hold it all together. She may very well fly off the face of the earth if she doesn’t hang on to the kitchen counter. At least that’s how she feels after her mother, Bernice, a lively, recently widowed fifty-five-year-old breaks the news that she has early onset Alzheimer’s.

In an effort to cope with the stress, Iris makes her mother’s famous Everything-That-Is-Bad-For-You casserole, a childhood favourite. Her siblings, on the other hand, are on opposite sides of the...