It''s the night before Ariel''s chemotherapy - her Friday Water - and a man is shot outside her house. The Angel of Death is surely circling, she believes; the next to die will likely be her. It isn''t self-pity that motivates Ariel''s morbid thoughts. Her husband, Barin, is in jail in Cuba (a Canadian documentary filmmaker caught filming the wrong story line). Her beloved older sister, Veronica, has gone to see if she can pull strings and extricate her brother-in-law. And her daughter, Rumer, is full of adolescent angst, having just menstruated for the first time.

The house in which Ariel lives is a legacy from her grandparents. Its rooms - "Little Italy," "Swan Lake," and others - are filled with memories and smells that Ariel recognizes as she moves from space to space, lying down, sleeping, preparing a meal, waiting for the return of her husband, her sister, her health.

Friday Water is a novel that quietly celebrates a woman''s life, even from the depths of breast cancer and loneliness. The characters - particularly Ariel and her sister Veronica - become family any reader would wish to know and hold.