Diane Tucker, "His Sweet Favour"

At Soul Food, we know Diane Tucker as a poet. She's read her work at CHRISTMAS PRESENCE and other Pacific Theatre shows - there's a wee sample at Oblations. Now her first novel is about to be published. And hey - it's got an actress in it!


His Sweet Favour
Thistledown Press, September 2009

Meet Favour Wyatt and her friends, Leith, Maryruth, Brady and Rick, grade twelve students at Mooney Secondary in Vancouver. Bonded by the dream of having their own theatre company, the group’s friendship is challenged by two events: Leith believes he has been given a message, “Darkness and light must join and be one, or every good promise will be broken”; and, Favour and Leith begin a serious relationship. Favour now wrestles with how to love someone and retain her sense of self, and as the friends rehearse for their final high school performance, each adopts different attitudes toward Leith’s message and toward each other, with profound consequences for all. His Sweet Favour explores the real-life drama of first love, peer pressure, failure and self-determination, and is a passionate exploration of friendship’s double-edged sword: friends can hold you captive or set you free.

His Sweet Favour is so alive, you’ll swear that Favour, the budding actress narrator and heroine of this book, was an actual honey-haired girl who came of age and learned about love during her final year of high school in the 1980s. You won’t be able to stop thinking about her (or the rest of the cast of characters in this highly readable, virtuoso performance of a sad and “sweet” story), and you’ll see — you’ll wish the book would never end.
Russell Thornton, author of House Built of Rain