Beginning of Was

What would you do if you lost everything? Following the deaths of her alcoholic husband and young daughter in a car crash, Marta Fett flees her small-town Ontario home for Toronto. She finds herself seeking refuge at a downtown churchnot because she's religious, but because she can think of no other place that would harbour a person as irredeemable as she imagines herself to be in her daughter's death. She begins to develop tentative relationships at the margins of this community, growing close to an old woman who is preparing to die and to a quiet young girl her own daughter's age. But there is no escaping the past. Powerful memories insinuate themselves into her new life. And she soon discovers that only by revisiting her past will she find the means and the strength to face the future.