National Network for Equitable Library Service

Sam Brown is a shy, nineteen-year-old farm kid fresh out of cooking school. Determined to make a life for himself in the city, he lands a job in a busy downtown Saskatoon diner. There, he meets Slash, the restaurant's gruff middle-aged cook and Bliss, an abrasive waitress. As the two men help Bliss struggle with her own demons, they are forced to face the truth inside of their own unlikely friendship. Baggage is a novel about lost souls finding one another; it's a story of intimacy and how it forces us to see the truths we don't always have the strength to face on our own. The valuable lesson in this novel is to learn that when you have distanced yourself from loved ones, you need to walk. But don't walk away - walk back and close the distance. Wherever that distance comes from, our differences or something else, it's just like the huge distances of the prairie and we need to close that distance with our tolerance and our love.