Diana Guthrie is a young woman struggling between her sense of “what she ought to do” and her need to believe that she is more than a puppet manipulated by other people. When she learns that her powerful and controlling mother – whom she hasn’t seen in 15 years – is dying, she hurries back to her childhood home. But there, her memories and conflicts threaten to prevent her from climbing the stairs that will take her mother’s bedside until it is too late.

Winner of a Writers Guild of Alberta award for Excellence in Writing, The Woman Upstairs was published to widespread acclaim in 1989 by Newest Press. Mary W. Walters (who started writing as Mary Walters Riskin) is also the author of Bitters (NeWest Press, now out of print), a collection of short stories (Cool, River Books, available from the author), and a book of non-fiction (Write an Effective Funding Application: A Guide for Researchers and Scholars, The Johns Hopkins University Press) and dozens of short stories and articles.

The Woman Upstairs went out of print several years ago, but has been reprinted in its entirety.

Available Here

“It is an absorbing and well-crafted book, a broody mystery, a puzzle whose closely interlocking pieces are tossed out, flash-back style, at just about the perfect pace for the reader." – Alberta Report