Force Times Distance
While the extended Jones family is gathered for their grandmother’s funeral, thirty-three-year-old JJ suffers a cerebral aneurysm and goes into a coma.
Following surgery, his brain is functional, but all of his motor skills and memories are wiped out, rendering him a blank slate who is suddenly dependent upon his loved ones.
As his relatives hold vigil at the hospital, they each contemplate how to re-construct JJ’s history and explain his place in the world.
JJ can carry on disoriented conversations for about two minutes. Then his brain resets and he begins all over again. He has no sense of time. The family stories are told in brief segments to facilitate JJ’s capacity for understanding.
The Joneses are forced to confront long-buried secrets and conflicts, and to collectively re-define family, truth, and neuro-normative as they create the story of who they are.
Novel Manuscript - Literary Fiction
Longlisted for the 2017 Mslexia Novel Prize.
Finalist for the 2017 Dzanc Books Prize.