Run by Karen Morton, the eccentric, sex-fantasy-prone mother in a hilarious yet deeply troubled dysfunctional family in North Vancouver, the Footstop Cafe is a place to put your feet up near the beautiful but tragedy-plagued Lynn Canyon and its vertigo-inspiring footbridge. It’s the canyon and the cafe that serve as the nexus around which Karen’s universe revolves. Things happen here. Amazing things.

Karen’s husband is a podiatrist with a foot fetish, her teen daughter thinks she’s a lesbian but is afraid to confront the reality, and her younger son is given to bowel movements in closets and the building of bombs. Throw in Karen’s unconventional Anglican priest father and his Tibetan wife, a hairy, fat male belly dancer named Moey, a randy virgin high-school boy diver with Olympic ambitions, and a host of other quirky, unforgettable characters, and you have a literary novel that is at turns absurdist, touching, manic, and supremely irreverent.