Wake Up, Maggie

by Susan M. Toy

In 1958, two girls, both named Karen, meet on the first day of school and believe they will become forever friends. Growing up in Toronto’s Beach neighbourhood during the 60s and early 70s, they don’t realize how much their friendship, and lives, will be affected, not only by their familes, friends, and the place where they live, but also because of the turbulent decade that forged their entire generation. Susan Toy paints a vivid picture of a young woman’s journey dealing with the complications of friendships, dating, that unique relationship between mother and daughter … and the consequences of naively believing anything can last forever.
Susan M. Toy grew up in Toronto’s Beach neighbourhood. She left in 1972 to attend university and has since been a bookseller, an award-winning sales rep for publishers, an author impresario, and now is a writer and publisher, sharing her time between a traditional Saltbox house in Newfoundland, Canada, and a house, with four cats in the yard, on the Caribbean island of Bequia.

196 pages, Kindle Edition

Published April 13, 2026

About the author

I have been a bookseller, an award-winning publishing sales representative, a literacy teacher, and a promoter of fellow authors and their books through my company, Alberta Books Canada. I have written and published one novel (print and eBook) and a novella (eBook) and I am a publisher, under my imprints, IslandCatEditions and IslandShorts. Through Alberta Books Canada, I represented authors directly, helping them find promotion for themselves and their books, sought out new readers, and assisted them in making wise career decisions. I created the writing contest, Coffee Shop Author, have sat on the Board of Directors of the Fernie Writers’ Conference, served as a member of the Calgary Distinguished Writers Program steering committee, and was a member of the board of directors for the Writers’ Guild of Alberta. I lived in Calgary for a number of years, but have moved my Canadian residence to Newfoundland, and currently spend half the year there and the other half at my home on Bequia in the Caribbean.

Reviews

[Gwen Whitford · Rating 5 out of 5]

CariCan (Caribbean-Canadian) author Susan Toy has dished up a delicious summer read that you will have difficulty putting down.
This coming-of-age (and beyond) novel is primarily set in the then-quaint Beach neighbourhood of Toronto in the 60's and 70's. After high school, the two main characters (both named Karen at birth, then jointly changed their names) lose contact due to betrayals, the relocation of one, family dynamics, vastly different lifestyles, as well as career aspirations (or not). They later reunite under sad circumstances towards the book's gripping conclusion. Suffice to say that their lifelong tenuous friendship is fraught with tension, irony, deceit and disappointment
The surprising twists and turns of the plot, and Toy's skillful development of the characters kept me turning pages well into the night. I really enjoyed this escape into a bygone era ( in which I have actually lived) and it made me think about my own relationships, and how they've ended up years later.
I liked Toy's latest book so much that I am going to read it again! Be sure to put 'Wake Up Maggie' on your summer reading list. - and get ready to go back in time, smile a while and shed a few tears!

[Paul Butler · Rating 5 out of 5]

'Wake Up, Maggie' follows only child Karen's childhood in the 1960s in Toronto's The Beaches, through her liberated college years in the 1970s, all the way to maturity and middle age. We experience the pain of loyalties so fierce they threaten to submerge personality and ambition. We also experience youthful assumptions that blind Karen to the nature of her home life. We're locked so tight inside the noise of the eras -- Beatlemania, The Kennedy's, the Civil Rights movement, sexual liberation -- that we, like Karen, don't notice the truths that lie closest to home. These revelations about family and friends are unexpected when they come yet make complete sense in retrospect. A highly satisfying work from a seasoned writer who not only understands the distraction of growing up but is able to turn it into insightful drama.

[Betty Caroli · Rating 5 out of 5]

An excellent read. I was pulled into Karen's story immediately but kept wondering about the book's title. Not until the end did I get my answer, and it was actually multiple revelations about how we evaluate friendships and never really know those closest to us. Highly recommend.