In this episode, I’m joined by Ann Cavolvic to discuss her novel, Count On Me. The novel follows the story of Tia and her brother Tristan, who, alongside his girlfriend, proceeds to take financial advantage of their parents when they’re ill. It’s a story of broken trust and the duty of love.
Ann’s novel explores the realities of elder abuse and the systems that continue to perpetuate it. It is a tribute to health care professionals who care for the elderly but also an expose on those who profit from this vulnerable group.
Ann and I talk about dysfunctional upbringing and its impact on the relationship between adult children and their aging parents. And we zoom into the internal struggles and physical and financial demands of being in the sandwich generation—a generation of adults caring simultaneously for their dependent children and aging parents.
In the end we wanted to know: what makes a person do the things they do? What do you think?
Show highlights
- What makes one child cruel and another kind?
- Breaking the cycles of childhood pain
- The eternal consequence of a dysfunctional family
- When the legal system perpetuates elder abuse
- Obsessions and transactions
- Ann’s strict writing schedule
“The vast majority of elder abuse is actually not perpetrated by someone like a nurse, it’s by someone known to the family.”
Ann Cavlovic
Count on Me is available for purchase through the links below.
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About Ann Cavlovic
Count On Me is Ann Cavlovic’s debut novel (Guernica Editions, 2025). Her fiction and creative non-fiction have appeared in Event, The Fiddlehead, The Globe and Mail, Grain, Little Bird Stories, PRISM international, Room, SubTerrain, The Anthology This Place a Stranger (Caitlin Press), and elsewhere.
Find out more at: anncavlovic.com
About Count On Me
Count on Me exposes how a family can fracture when aging parents grow frail and debts from the past resurface. Tia is raising a baby when her older brother Tristan gradually takes over their ailing parents’ bank account, house, and medical decisions. Through a web of complex family dynamics, Tia uncovers the disaster left by Tristan’s meddling in their parents’ lives.
As Tia tries to set things straight, she confronts how money and love were entangled in her family, and whether her own mothering now goes to opposite extremes. Told in an intelligent and hopeful voice, this is a story about sibling rivalry, elder abuse, how life can become transactional, and how we come to feel entitled to someone else’s money.
Find out more at: anncavlovic.com
Host’s links
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