Tada! I’m sending out my new novel Nine in Ten to prospective agents and publishers. Inspired by a bizarre chapter in Toronto’s history, and set in 1976, Nine in Ten asks whether an overbearing father deserves a chance to make amends with his alienated offspring. Widower Emm Benbow, told by his doctor he can no longer live alone, must move in with one of his many children or go to a dreaded old age home. Fifty years earlier, Emm pressured his wife Izora to enter the Toronto Stork Derby, an actual contest which offered a sizable cash award to the woman who had the most babies between 1926 and 1936. They had a large family, but it was hardly the happy one Emm envisioned. Now, living in turn with each of his adult children, Emm discovers that the true value of fatherhood is not measured in big prizes, but in small rewards.
