Book excerpt: FINALIST FOR THE 2019 GOVERNOR GENERAL’S LITERARY AWARD NOMINATED FOR THE 2019 SCOTIABANK GILLER PRIZE SHORTLISTED FOR THE 2019 TRILLIUM BOOK AWARD NOMINATED FOR THE TORONTO BOOK AWARD AS HEARD ON CBC'S THE NEXT CHAPTER WITH SHELAGH ROGERS A GLOBE AND MAIL BEST BOOK OF 2018 A QUILL & QUIRE BEST BOOK OF 2018 A 49TH SHELF EDITOR'S PICK Inspired by the work of Alex Colville, the linked stories in K.D. Miller’s Late Breaking form a suite of portraits that evoke the paintings’ looming atmospheres and uncanny stillness while traveling deeply into their subjects’ vividly imagined lives. Throughout, the collection bears witness to the vulnerability of the elder heart, revealing that love, sex, and heartbreak are not only the domain of the young, and deftly rendering the conflicts that divide us and the ties that bind. Husbands and wives struggle to communicate, romantic relationships flare and falter, parents and children navigate their complicated feelings, and older women struggle with diminishing status in a youth-obsessed culture while the threat of violence haunts young women and girls. Yet as the stories intersect and the characters’ lives are increasingly entwined, fear, guilt, estrangement, and the fact of death are met by courage, redemption and the fragile beauty of love, in all its myriad guises. Brilliantly observed, both tender and tortured, and in no way afraid of the dark, these stories confirm K.D. Miller as one of our best and bravest writers.