Heartache and Other Natural Shocks

When 15-year-old Julia Epstein and her Anglophone family flee Montreal in October 1970, she struggles to adjust to a new life in the suburban wasteland of Toronto.

Next door lives Carla Cabrielli, who seems to Julia impossibly cool and impossibly adept at getting what she wants.

Julia and Carla get on a collision course, not only for the same role in the school production of Hamlet, but also for the leading man.

Issues of the main characters mental health are sensitively handled; a topic increasingly being discussed in the YA genre.