Marsha Barrett

Storm Orphan Marsha Barrett

When Marsha Barrett is six years old, her mother dies of cancer. The youngest of three sisters in a Jewish family, she goes through a turbulent youth during the 1960s and 1970s, rebelling against her demanding and often absent father. Barrett depicts the heartbreaking yet humorous chaos in her household as her philandering father seeks a replacement wife and mother for his daughters. At age seventeen, disowned by her dad and feeling wildly un-mothered, Marsha flees her home in North Toronto to be independent.

Storm Orphan is about a strong-spirited daughter and her domineering father. It's about living through tragedy yet finding hilarity. It's about grief and joy. It's about losing and discovering love, but ultimately it's a story about finding home.