THE ERRATICS

Laveau-Harvie returned to Alberta from Australia after learning that a fall had landed her elderly, "mad as a meat-ax" mother in the hospital. The author’s concern was not so much for her mother, but more for her foggy-brained father, whom her mother had starved and turned against his daughters. Long disinherited by her parents, Laveau-Harvie knew that keeping her mother confined was the only way to save her father. As she began to assess the world her estranged parents inhabited in their filthy, isolated house on 20 acres, memories of her past life with them resurfaced. Most of the memories involved her mother. Though given to sometimes-outrageous exaggeration, she could make "anything sound reasonable. On her urging, Mormons have been known to consume alcohol.” She also seemed to take pleasure in making both her daughters feel like "prey,” often repeating the refrain, "I'll get you and you won't even know I'm doing it.” The author and her sister both fled and made lives far away from home, but when her more conciliatory sister offered to move from her home in Vancouver, her mother suggested that "trespassing anywhere near them would be answered with a Kalashnikov.” For 18 months, the sisters traveled back and forth to ensure that their mother would be ruled incompetent and to see that their father received proper care. The home care specialists they hired—such as the "housekeeping slut,” the “gold digger,” and the “serial killer"—eventually made them realize that they would need to reforge broken ties and bring their father back into their lives. This riveting book explores family relationships—and the sometimes-devastating pain they cause—with a darkly humorous ferocity that is both remarkable and eloquent.

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