Painting Pictures features eight stories of discovery, betrayal, and passion. The stories depict the emotional turmoil that results from decisions: a little girl who migrates to Canada on a hot August day is flabbergasted to discover there’s no snow; a graphic designer leaves her husband each morning to meet her lover; an inconsolable heartbreak leads a woman to the brink of sanity as she desperately wanders city streets seeking answers in dark places; a young woman gives a touching eulogy to the woman who raised her; a wife is torn between her love for her husband and his brother; a college graduate moves across the country to keep a secret and recover from the lover who abandoned her, only to meet him again; a young woman experiences the joy of first love, its passionate awakening, and the moment when it’s questioned; and three women bond while shopping for dresses for their fictional weddings.In these stories, set in Canada and the Caribbean, the day-to-day incidents set the stage for events that impact and change lives.

Gayle Gonsalves’ stories have appeared in The Bluelight Corner, In the Black and So the Nailhead Bend, So the Story End. She holds a BA from York University, and lives and writes in Toronto.

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Painting Pictures is a collection of lyrical stories of love and betrayal, reflection and reconciliation in Canada and Antigua, the adopted and native homelands author Gayle Gonsalves shares with her female narrators. Elizabeth Abbott, author of Sugar: A Bittersweet HistoryGayle Gonsalves writes like the wind: a gust blows around you in words so well put together that they whip around your head, your ears, your eyes and your senses all at the same time. There is art in the way this writer builds your understanding of a character, a scene, or a relationship, leaving you aching to know more than can be contained within the pages of a book. You are left with the feeling that the stories will come back again another day; until then, the characters continue to haunt you.Dr. Althea Prince, author of Ladies of the Night and Loving This Man