Counterpoint

In this moving and award-winning novel, the melodies of three generations of French-Canadian women are hauntingly woven together. Celine, Philomene and Odette - grandmother, mother, daughter - each bear the mark of a convent enducation and the constricted roles thought proper for Catholic women. Of the three, the greatest rebel is not the contemporary Odette, but her mother, Philomene, a woman who defies convention to pursue a career as a doctor.A generation later her dauther Odette makes a pilgrimage from the West Coast to her grandmother's house in the once-thriving French community of St. Prosper du Lac. On the journey, she recaptures the memories and symbols her Quebec-born grandmother stitched into the coverlet - the "conterpoint" - which Odette has inherited.