Picket Fences

A funny and poignant story about coming of age after you've already grown up.

Sloane Sawyer had it all planned—she and her best friend Stephie would graduate from high school, get out of Tippett Valley and have dazzling complementary careers. Sloane would become an award-winning graphic designer, creating band posters using Stephie's artwork. She would also have a loving husband, the requisite two kids and a house with a white picket fence. As she turns thirty, Sloane has a boring job and a boss who ignores her. She has no children, doesn't own a house, has gained fifteen pounds and questions how her video game-playing husband could possibly love her. And Stephie, working in a bar and living in Tippett Valley with the disreputable Randy, is increasingly distant. Even as Sloane clings to her dream, she comes to realize that she and Stephie won't be able to move forward until they finally confront an old tragedy.

Emma L.R. Hogg is a born writer. After graduating from the University of Guelph, she began work on the first of six novels she self-published. Her fifth novel, The Fourth Wall (2015) was shortlisted for the Whistler Independent Book Award for Fiction; her next book, Winona Rising (2018) was a finalist for the same award. Her poetry has been published in Carousel magazine.Having lived in multiple Ontario cities, she now calls Sault Ste. Marie, Ontario home.