When a woman discovers a fortune in the attic, she begins a pilgrimage that takes her to the knife-edge between blessing and curse. Two fatherless children think Mrs. Crisander is nothing more than the creepy next-door neighbour'until they nearly kill her pot-bellied pig and learn the secrets of her past. A young girl talks about grade six, stealing cigarettes, and her sister's no-food diet while being photographed by an Internet pornographer. The stories of Suitable Precautions are fresh and haunting, resonant with the bitter beauty of lives derailed, reclaimed, celebrated, and questioned. By turns funny and absurd, unexpected and devastating, these stories reveal the strange and often tenuous bonds between people in love, marriage, and friendship.