A Study In Red truly earns its title. It’s about red emotion – rage, lust— and their price. But it’s also a study of the shades of red of blood: old blood, new blood, dirty blood. The story examines what it means to us to share the same blood with someone, or not, what it means to take it from someone, how we can long to give it to someone, how women are taxed of it their whole lives.
Gault introduces us to Amy and Carol, two women as different and separate as can be and yet connected by the actions of one man years before. The author deftly draws the reader into the individual stories of trauma that spring from that connection and through their peripheral relationships with other women, a greater picture emerges. In the present day, Amy and Carol separately mull their common story, trying to recall how it happened and to whom it happened, but memory is slippery and decades later it’s difficult to tell what was real and what was only told to them later.
…trying to recall how it happened and to whom it happened, but memory is slippery and decades later it’s difficult to tell what was real and what was only told to them later.
While both Amy and Carol sift through their own memories and try to figure out whose word on the matter can be trusted, they must also grapple with the bloody aftermath of their own residual red emotions. Gault captures perfectly that when truth is hidden for so long, one of the few certainties is that such emotions left unacknowledged or unaddressed breed discontent. This story is so important right now, in a time when truth is relative and discontent widespread. We need books that illustrate empathy now more than ever. Carol’s observation says it best: If it happened to her, it happened to me.
Connie Gault is the recipient of the 2025 Cheryl and Henry Kloppenburg Award for Literary Excellence. Her most recent novel, The Rasmussen Papers, was short-listed for the 2024 Toronto Book Award. Previous fiction has won several Saskatchewan awards and has been short-listed for the Commonwealth Prize for Best Novel of Canada and the Caribbean and long-listed for the Giller Prize. After living most of her life in Saskatchewan, Connie now resides in London, Ontario.
Publisher: Thistledown Press (May 12, 2026)
Paperback 6″ x 8.6″ | 252 pages
ISBN: 9781771872904
Theresa Therrien lives with her partner in London, Ontario. Her work has been published in The Globe and Mail, Storgy and Scarlet Leaf Review and been longlisted in contests for ROOM Magazine and The Stratford Writer’s Festival. Her debut YA novel will be published Fall of 2027. The story springs from her lived experience growing up with undiagnosed hearing loss, and is about a funny, feisty teen walking a fine line on the edge of reality, committing ever riskier acts of rebellion as she tries to be heard, even as she’s losing her hearing.
