Struck in the Heart

Sharon Butala, the multi award-winning literary writer of novels, short stories and memoirs (The Perfection of the Morning), turns her prodigious narrative skills for the first time to a gripping story of greed, violence, and even ghosts, played out against a backdrop of the Covid pandemic, with spellbinding results.

In the grip of the pandemic, accountant Rick Phillips bundles his wife, Jill, and their two young children out of their suburban home in Radiance and drives them to the remote prairie farm where he grew up. What he hopes will be a safe haven becomes something far darker when old grudges, buried secrets, and a violent intrusion shatter the fragile peace.

As the virus claims lives in the city and death visits the farm itself, Rick is forced to confront the consequences of the double life he has carefully hidden from his family: the cash he has been stashing for a dangerous local operator, the hidden revolver he never should have kept, and a teenage mistake whose shadow still reaches across decades.

With his parents gone, his marriage strained, and ruthless men circling for what he owes, Rick must decide what he is willing to sacrifice-and what he is willing to bury-to protect the people he loves.

Struck in the Heart is a taut, emotionally charged novel of family, guilt, and moral reckoning set against the stark beauty and isolation of the Canadian prairies during a time of collective crisis.