Sylvia Drummond Wright needs to escape. A Toronto-based, Giller-longlisted novelist who’s been married thirty years, she secretly buys a dilapidated old lodge in New Brunswick and plans to move there with her grandmother and her disabled adult daughter.
But her husband, Kent, takes over and, capitalizing on his wife’s success, turns the lodge into a business venture — a writing retreat.
Sylvia is determined not to have anything to do with the Wright Retreat, but as an eclectic group of people converges in the renovated lodge by the water, compelling stories and beautiful friendships emerge, and Sylvia finds herself drawn in. There’s Janice, a residential school survivor. Irma, whose husband has dragged her here, and who carries an unbelievable grief. Veronica and Dot, who each carry terrible secrets connected to this very lodge, which used to be a Catholic girls’ home and was the site of unbelievable cruelty. By the time the retreat is over, not a single person is unchanged — least of all Sylvia. Even the lodge itself has been transformed from a place of terror to one of healing.
The Wright Retreat is an irresistible celebration of story, friendship, and the astonishing power of connection.