Arley McNeney

Nolan Taylor is a thirteen-year veteran of the Canadian women’s wheelchair basketball team. Her position as “Big Girl” on the team belies her fragility when her decision to retire and undergo a long overdue hip replacement throws her into a post-retirement identity crisis. Spurred on by pain and a numbing domesticity with long-time love, Quinn McLeod, she retreats into her memory, reliving her rookie year and emerging sexuality with her much older mentor, Darren Steward. As Nolan struggles to maintain her tenuous connections to the people around her in the midst of physical anguish, we are reminded that, despite our bodies’ limitations, we have physical needs that we are driven to fulfill, and the adrenaline that pushes professional athletes can be harnessed to allow what may seem impossible.

• Shortlisted for the 2008 Commonwealth Writers' Prize, Canada and Caribbean Region, for Best First Book