Rose Addams
A witty, compassionate novel about family, friendship, aging, and the unpredictable third act of life.
Rose Addams is hitting her sixties — but these days, it feels like they’re starting to hit back.
Her grown children are making choices she doesn’t quite understand. Her husband has decided to retire early and finally write his long-delayed book. Her friends are entering new romantic chapters that Rose finds difficult to approve of. And when she encounters a young man panhandling outside the library where she works, Rose is pulled into a chain of events that forces her to confront her family, her friendships, her assumptions, and herself.
Warm, funny, sharply observed, and deeply humane, Rose Addams is a novel about a woman entering her third act — and discovering that life still has plenty of surprises left.
Available from NeWest Press and wherever books are sold.
About the Book
Rose Addams has spent a lifetime trying to be useful, kind, and reasonably in control. But life in her sixties is proving more complicated than expected.
Her daughter, Morgan, has abandoned her thesis program and moved back home to Vancouver. Her son Jason’s partner has never quite warmed to Rose. Her husband Charles is leaving university life behind to work on the book he has been talking about for years. And Garnet, Charles’s rakish best friend, has a new mistress who is much too young for their social circle — at least according to Rose.
Then Rose meets a young man panhandling outside her library office, and what begins as a passing encounter soon unsettles everything she thought she understood about family, responsibility, generosity, and change.
With humour, compassion, and sharp insight, Margie Taylor explores the life of a woman trying to stay open-hearted in a rapidly changing world. Rose Addams is a novel about marriage, motherhood, friendship, aging, class, social expectations, and the sometimes uncomfortable work of seeing ourselves more clearly.
Why Readers Connect With Rose
Rose is not perfect. That’s part of what makes her so recognizable.
She jumps to conclusions. She worries. She meddles. She tries to help, sometimes awkwardly. She wants to be generous but does not always understand the world her children inhabit. She is proud, vulnerable, funny, anxious, loving, and occasionally wrong.
In other words, she is human.
For readers who enjoy character-driven fiction about family, friendship, aging, and the quiet upheavals of ordinary life, Rose Addams offers a story that is both gently comic and emotionally honest.
Recognition & Features
Rose Addams has been featured and highlighted by a range of Canadian literary outlets and book communities, including:
- Featured in Read Alberta’s Alberta Beach Reads
- Featured on All Lit Up’s Cozy Fest
- Highlighted as one of Consumed by Ink’s Stand Out Books of 2023
- Included in 49th Shelf’s 2023 Spring Fiction Preview
- Named in Consumed by Ink’s A Fabulous Assortment of Summer Reading 2023
- Featured in interviews with Older & Bolder with Debbie McCulloch, The Coquitlam Writers Group, and NeWest Press Audio
Praise for Rose Addams
For this section, I’d use shorter quotes pulled from the strongest reviews. The full reviews are excellent, but some are too long for the page. Short excerpts will feel more polished and easier to scan.
“A beautifully crafted work… vivid characters facing real-world problems in a narrative that reads like a thriller.”
— Ken McGoogan, author of Fatal Passage and Lady Franklin’s Revenge
“A warm-hearted tale… highly engaging, frequently funny.”
— Barb Howard, author of Happy Sands and Western Taxidermy
“Hints of Jane Austen, Barbara Pym and Elizabeth Strout…”
— Karen Hofmann, award-winning author of A Brief View from the Coastal Suite and Echolocation
“Taylor shines a witty and compassionate light on the world of a woman navigating her sixth decade.”
— Marguerite Pigeon, author of The Endless Garment
“Margie Taylor writes with great empathy and sharp insight.”
— Lisa Guenther, author of Friendly Fire
“Funny, charming and entertaining.”
— Alison Manley, The Miramichi Reader
“A quiet masterpiece… funny and somber, solidly grounded and deeply moving.”
— Michael Sobota, The Chronicle-Journal
From the Publisher
Rose Addams is hitting her sixties, but these days it feels like they’re starting to hit back.
Her daughter, Morgan, has ditched her thesis program and moved back home to Vancouver. Her son Jason’s partner has never seen eye to eye with his mother. Her husband Charles has decided to take early retirement from the university to work on his long-gestating book. And Charles’s best friend Garnet has a new mistress who is far too young for their social circle.
When Rose encounters a young man panhandling outside her library office, a chain of events begins that will force her to confront the many moving parts of her increasingly complicated life.
Recalling the work of Caroline Adderson, Krista Foss, and Marie-Renée Lavoie, Rose Addams is an empathetic and incisive look at a woman entering her third act — trying to understand her family, her friendships, her changing world, and herself.
About Margie Taylor
Margie Taylor is the author of Rose Addams, Harrow Road, Displaced Persons, Some of Skippy’s Blues, and I’ll Read That For You. Her work blends humour, compassion, and keen observation, often exploring family, identity, aging, and the quiet dramas of everyday life.
A former CBC journalist and broadcaster, Margie brings a storyteller’s instinct and a sharp editorial eye to her fiction. Her writing has been recognized for its warmth, wit, emotional honesty, and attention to the complicated ways people misunderstand — and love — one another.
Meet Rose Addams
A funny, compassionate, and sharply observed novel about family, friendship, aging, and the surprises that arrive when life refuses to stay neatly arranged.