Just Fine: A Novel

Just Fine traces the mishaps and misadventures of a conflicted agoraphobe: a woman psychologically restricted to a life indoors but spiritually inclined to wander the meadows, roads, and community beyond the house and river of her youth.

Her struggle assumes historic proportions when her neighbours dream of their own escapes from the insular, predictable cadences of life in Acadia: Camil changes his name; Terry embarks on a voyage of discovery; Carmen studies exotic river deltas; Elizabeth searches for a transcendent love; and the agoraphobe, dreams of travelling to Paris and telling her story to a French television star. The course of their endeavours, like the river that dominates their town, twists and turns.

In its brilliant collage of river lore, art history, astrology, and mythology France Daigle’s rich and witty novel journeys beyond the cultural, psychological, and literary bounds within which its characters live and leads us to where history, fantasy, and memory collide. This is the initial work in the trilogy which also includes A Fine Passage and Life’s Little Difficulties.