What Makes You Happy is a diverse collection of tales – some drawn from life, others pure fiction – told by the inimitable Ruth Simkin. Short stories of engaging originality mingle with reports of travel to far kingdoms or hell and back, along with humourously poignant accounts from the author's career as a physician. Feminist, humanist and Jewish themes inform the collection, but it is the childlike voice of wonder at a world both tragic and magical that touches the reader. Laugh-out-loud funny in some places and raw or tender in others, What Makes You Happy deals with the large and small dramas of human existence. Whether remembering the confusion of a chastised child, recording backyard conversations with animals, chronicling declining physical ability or coming to terms with God, death and cruelty, Ruth Simkin’s abiding concern for justice and her infectious delight in the possible is evident in each page of this absorbing collection.

Born in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Dr. Ruth Simkin practiced family medicine for several decades and subsequently became a specialist in palliative care. She has studied in Canada, the US, Israel, China, England and Russia. She is the author of medical articles on women’s health as well as Like an Orange on a Seder Plate, a feminist Passover Haggadah. Retired from medicine, she now lives and writes in Victoria, BC where she shares a home with her animal companion Reenie.

Ruth Simkin's profile page