Just as "stories abound under a fall canopy", a woman's insights, gathered throughout a reflective period beyond child-rearing and retirement, blossom colourfully here. Through poems, short stories, and personal reflections, life's intimate moments are distilled into their deeper essence as meaningful perspectives on innocence, relationships, aging, grief, spirituality, memory, struggle and privilege. The author's journeys through immigration, coming of age and motherhood, in their simplicity, take us along the paths to universal truths with the unabashed openness of childhood and the hindsight and wisdom of older age. Monkey Appetite will appeal to the reader who enjoys looking on life with humour, retrospect, and abandon.