Interview - JoAnn McCaig and Beneficiary

2026-07-13

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Tara is joined by Canadian author JoAnn McCaig and they discuss her latest novel, Beneficiary, published in May 2026 by University of Calgary Press. https://shelflifebooks.ca/item/r5ypYwSBQz_hNTMssW3i2g "Seren was doomed to a country club cage and a leash of pearls until out of the blue on a Tuesday night in 1969, she found herself suddenly saying "no." More than fifty years later, she looks back on her life and each choice that followed, beautiful, tragic and completely her own.

Tara is joined by Canadian author JoAnn McCaig and they discuss her latest novel, Beneficiary, published in May 2026 by University of Calgary Press.

https://shelflifebooks.ca/item/r5ypYwSBQz_hNTMssW3i2g

"Seren was doomed to a country club cage and a leash of pearls until out of the blue on a Tuesday night in 1969, she found herself suddenly saying "no." More than fifty years later, she looks back on her life and each choice that followed, beautiful, tragic and completely her own.

Leaving her family for the freedom of the 1970s, Seren began a quest to discover how to live in this world as her true self—a quest that would take her from the heady countercultural milieu of communal houses on Vancouver Island through marriage and motherhood, divorce, and an unexpected inheritance that changed everything. Suddenly wealthy, Seren must wrestle with money, with class, and what it means to have more than most.

What does it mean to live truly, through tragedy and heartbreak? How do we create ourselves in a world that keeps changing? What does it mean to have money when so many people don't? A richly written, fiercely feminist novel imbued with real bravery, Beneficiary weaves the past and the present in a rich tapestry of life."