Under the Covers

A Life of Gumption, Passion, Gifts, and Secrets

This evocative collection of linked stories explores the hope, heartache, and messiness of life and love, revealing how, in the deepest corners of our beings, we long for healing.

Patricia invokes the presence of her deceased grandmother in a reverie and they reminisce while waiting for a resistant story to emerge. When she navigates the treacherous terrains of family sewing traditions and Spain’s gruelling cross-country pilgrims’ trail, unexpected truths are found in the depths of transformation. A woman’s quest for the perfect cinnamon bun becomes a metaphor for living without regret. Lessons passed from mother to daughter hinge on choosing the perfect coat. But when a crisis inspires the wrong purchase, a mysterious appearance delivers redemption. Through dance comes reckoning-with yearning for fatherly love, with confronting her own raw sexuality, and by accepting the harsh truths of aging. An old flame ignites an obsession and a gutsy reflection yields a potentially life-changing insight. Reaching a tipping point of overwhelm and panic spurs the exploration of harrowing episodes, and wholeness is found in a powerful naming. After a decade of maintaining a rambling heritage home on her own, Patricia feels bitterness rise in herself and slips away from her annual Christmas party. Faced with their father’s impending death, she and her sister, Joann, sense the arrival of their mother from her heavenly abode, which allows them to be together as a family once more.

With intelligent, clear-eyed prose, these stories reach into the heart of what it means to be a woman fully alive to her inner and outer worlds. Lyrical, sensuous, and unflinching, Under the Covers: A Life of Gumption, Passion, Gifts, and Secrets is a poignant, entertaining testimony to a life lived authentically

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Patricia Hetherington’s career path has encompassed teaching, training, and selling real estate for twenty years. At midlife she changed gears to complete a master's degree, becoming a counsellor and publishing the memoir The Winter Gardener: A Woman's Journey from Futile to Fertile (2007). She has walked unharmed on hot coals to impress a new lover and trekked the Camino de Santiago in Spain. In 2016 she quit her day job, throwing back the covers and pushing forward to publish a new book. She lives on the Sunshine Coast of British Columbia, Canada. Visit www.patriciahetherington.ca.

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“OMG I could not put this beautiful book down. Having a loved one who has mental health challenges, I appreciate Patricia’s full expression of these challenges so that others can be drawn toward their own light.”
—Susan Freeman, MBA, PCC, executive coach, speaker, and author

“Authentic, gritty, sometimes whimsical. This is a bold telling of one woman’s willingness to pay the price for fashioning a life she could call her own by drawing upon the strength and wisdom of her courageous forebears.”
—Annette Aubrey, MSW, Reg. MSW, Systemic Family Constellations facilitator

“Whether you are a mental health professional, a reader looking for a compelling story, or a brave human being hoping to find companionship on a sometimes lonely road, Under the Covers will befriend, inform, and hypnotize you.Here is a feast of ‘insider knowledge’ about mental health interwoven with glimpses of a family’s story and day-to-day life on the West Coast.”
—Arden Henley, Ed.D, RCC, vice president and principal of Canadian Programs, City University

“An unwavering response to life runs through this rich collection. At once poignant, sensuous, and entertaining.”
—Susan Page, executive director of San Miguel Writers’ Conference and Literary Festival

“A gripping memoir of love and despair, Hetherington’s Under the Covers reads like a ticking time bomb. So powerful is her prose that her recipe for lemon meringue pie had me on the edge of my chair. Here is an author riding roughshod over herself in the service of truth and self-discovery. I found myself speed-reading, as if the pages might self-destruct. What a ride! What a read!”
—P.J. Reece, author of Story Structure Expedition and Story Structure to Die For