Born only a week after the tragic death of her father, Frances Chopp grows up believing that she was sent to earth as her father's messenger to pull her mother out of her grief. And in the years that follow, Frances tries to make sense of the hard times that have struck her immigrant family, even as she struggles to understand the puzzle of her family's past. Set in the mining and steel towns of Southern Ontario in the years between the wars, Messenger is a moving story of familial love and the determination to survive.