The Fun Times Brigade

Overview

From acclaimed author Lindsay Zier-Vogel comes an insightful and heart-rending exploration of motherhood, grief, and the search for identity.

Amy is a new mother, navigating the fog of those bewildering early days and struggling with a role she feels ill-prepared for. It’s the first time in a decade that she hasn’t been living the busy life of an acclaimed children’s musician, and her sense of self is unravelling. To make matters worse, her bandmates have seemingly abandoned her.

In flashbacks, we see Amy’s journey to success—her stumblings as a solo singer-songwriter and her eventual rise to fame as a member of the Fun Times Brigade. But as the novel progresses—and Amy grapples with a devastating loss—we come to understand how precarious definitions of artistic success can be.

The Fun Times Brigade examines the enduring challenges of reconciling being an artist with being a mother. It is also a timely reflection on forgiveness and what it really means to have a good life in a world that demands we have—and be—it all, and asserts that amidst the chaos, we can find our way back to our genuine selves.

Author Biography

LINDSAY ZIER-VOGEL is a Toronto-based author, swimmer, grant writer, and the creator of the internationally acclaimed Love Lettering Project. She is the author of The Fun Times Brigade (2025), and Letters to Amelia (2021), and her first picture book, Dear Street (2023) was a Junior Library Guild pick, a Canadian Children’s Book Centre book of the year, and was nominated for three reader’s choice awards—the Forest of Reading (Canada), a Magnolia Book Award in Mississippi and the Mountain Laurel Award in Pennsylvania. Her first poetry collection, Midnight to 2 a.m., is forthcoming in fall 2027.