Carousel (Paperback)

Winner of the 2020 International Book Award for LGBTQ Fiction; Finalist for the Foreword INDIES Book of the Year Awards

Margot Wright has led a deliberate life. At 18, she left her unusual and abusive family situation and never looked back, and then two years later she devoted herself wholly to Estelle Coté, her first and only love. But now, at 45, freshly retired from a career in antique firearms dealing, and settling into a new home with her wife, Margot finds herself feeling restless. Bored. She admits this to herself on the day she visits Le Galopant, a historic carousel that has become bafflingly meaningful to Estelle; and, as with anyone wishing to dodge a midlife crisis, Margot sets her feelings aside, intending to ignore them for as long as possible.

At La Ronde, the amusement park where Le Galopant is showcased, Margot is accosted by a 17-year-old girl named Katherine de Wilde. Katy is hyper and unrefined, "rural," everything Margot cannot stand, yet she finds herself thinking more and more about the lisping girl in the Converse sneakers and "Meat is Murder" T-shirt as the days tread on. Even after Estelle discovers a massive secret she's been keeping for a decade, forces her into couples counseling and then on a road trip to confront this secret, Margot is unable to stop Katy from seeping into her thoughts. So when Katy phones her one morning with bad news, "They're taking down Le Galopant for good. It's broken!" Margot yields to impulse and pursues her interest in the girl.

Set between Montreal, Quebec and various American cities, Carousel is a story about secrets--secret yearnings, lives, and losses--and the measures we take to protect our loved ones from the monsters we see ourselves to be.

April Ford's story collection, The Poor Children, published in 2015, was shortlisted for the international Scott Prize for a debut short story collection, and their story "Project Fumarase" was among the winning pieces featured in the 2016 Pushcart Prize anthology. April received their B.A. in Creative Writing and Professional Writing from Concordia University (Montreal, Quebec), and their M.F.A. in Fiction from Queens University of Charlotte (Charlotte, North Carolina). They spent time at Virginia Center for the Creative Arts as a Robert Johnson Fellow, and at Ucross Foundation as a Writer in Residence. From 2010-2017, they taught French and creative writing at State University of New York at Oneonta. Their writing has appeared in numerous print and online journals, including Grain, New Madrid, Ploughshares, Beecher's, Atticus Review, SAND, Santa Fe Literary Review, and Gargoyle. They live in Montreal.