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c2011., Adult, McClelland & Stewart Call No: Fic Hay Availability:1 of 1 At Your Library Summary Note: "In a small prairie school in 1929, Connie Flood helps a backward student, Michael Graves, learn how to read. Observing them and darkening their lives is the principal, Parley Burns, whose strange behaviour culminates in an attack so disturbing its repercussions continue to the present day. Connie's niece, Anne, tells the story. Impelled by curiosity about her dynamic, adventurous aunt and her more conventional mother, she revisits Connie's past and her mother's broken childhood. In the process, she unravels the enigma of Parley Burns and the mysterious (and unrelated) deaths of two young girls. As the novel moves deeper into their lives, the triangle of principal, teacher, student opens out into other emotional triangles <U+2013> aunt, niece, lover; mother, daughter, granddaughter <U+2013> until a sudden, capsizing love thrusts Anne herself into a newly independent life. This spellbinding tale <U+2013> set in Saskatchewan and the Ottawa Valley <U+2013> crosses generations and cuts to the bone. It probes the roots of obsessive love and hate, how the hurts and desires of childhood persist and are passed on as if in the blood. It lays bare the urgency of discovering what we were never told about the past. And it celebrates the process of becoming who we are in a world full of startling connections that lie just out of sight."--Inside jacket flap.
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c2010., Adult, Vintage Canada Call No: QWF Fic Dic Availability:1 of 1 At Your Library Summary Note: "A sweek, smart and occasionally sureal romantic comedy, featuring two young friends who could become lovers - if only one on them hadn't convinced herself that the end of the world is nigh."--Inside front cover.
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2011., Viking Canada Call No: QWF 813.54 Y24b Availability:2 of 2 At Your Library Summary Note: A veteran book reviewer, Yanofsky has spent a lifetime immersed in literature (not to mention old movies and old jokes), which he calls shtick. This account of a year in the life of a family describes a father's struggle to enter his son's world, the world of autism, using the materials he knows best: self-help books, feel-good memoirs, literary classics from the Bible to Dr. Seuss, old movies, and, yes, shtick. Funny, wrenching, and unfailingly candid, Bad Animals is both an exploration of a baffling condition and a quirky love story told by a gifted writer.
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[2015], Adult, Harper Avenue Call No: 616.550 U79b Edition: 1st ed. Availability:1 of 1 At Your Library Summary Note: The story begins on St. Stephen's Day, 2010, in St. John's, NL, when the author gives birth to a baby girl named Sadie Jane who has a shock of snow-white hair. After three months of medical testing, Sadie is diagnosed with albinism, a rare genetic condition where pigment fails to form in the skin, hair and eyes. She is visually impaired and faces a lifetime indoors. A journalist and folklore scholar accustomed to processing the world through other people's stories, Emily is drawn to understanding her child's difference by researching the cultural beliefs associated with albinism worldwide.
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By Pobi, Robertc2012., General, Touchstone/Simon & Schuster Call No: MYS QWF Fic Pob Edition: Touchstone export ed. Availability:1 of 1 At Your Library Summary Note: "FBI contractor Jake Cole deciphers the language of murderers by reconstructing three-dimensional crime scene models in his head, a talent that has left his nerves frayed and his psyche fragile. Jake returns to Montauk for the first time in a quarter of a century when his father, a renowned painter, lights himself ablaze and crashes through a plate-glass window. Once home, Jake is pulled into a gruesome local homicide investigation that echoes his mother's murder three decades earlier. As he sifts through the detritus of his father's madness, Jake discovers thousands of seemingly meaningless paintings stacked in the studio - a bizarre trail of dust-covered breadcrumbs the painter left as he tumbled down the rabbit hole of dementia - breadcrumbs that Jake believes lead to the killer. With the help of Sheriff Dan Hauser - a man scrambling to prepare the seaside community for the arrival of a catastrophic hurricane - Jake Cole sets out to find the seemingly unstoppable force of malevolence known as the Bloodman..."--Author's website.
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2018., McGill-Queen's University Press Call No: 362.309713 B956b Availability:1 of 1 At Your Library Series Title: McGill-Queen's/Associated Medical Services studies in the history of medicine, health, and society Volume: 50Summary Note: "After 133 years of operation, the 2009 closure of Ontario's government-run institutions for people with intellectual disabilities has allowed accounts of those affected to emerge. In Broken, Madeline Burghardt draws from narratives of institutional survivors, their siblings, and their parents to examine the far-reaching consequences of institutionalization due to intellectual difference. Beginning with a thorough history of the rise of institutions as a system to manage difference, Broken provides an overview of the development of institutions in Ontario and examines the socio-political conditions leading to families' decisions to institutionalize their children. Through this exploration, other themes emerge, including the historical and arbitrary construction of intellectual disability and the resulting segregation of those considered a threat to the well-being of the family and the populace; the overlap between institutionalization and the workings of capitalism; and contemporaneous practices of segregation in Canadian history, such as Indian residential schools. Drawing from people's direct, lived experiences, the second half of the book gathers poignant accounts of institutionalization's cascading effects on family relationships and understandings of disability, ranging from stories of personal loss and confusion to family breakage. Adding to a growing body of work addressing Canada's treatment of historically marginalized peoples, Broken exposes the consequences of policy based on socio-political constructions of disability and difference, and of the fundamentally unjust premise of institutionalization."--
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c1994., Dutton, Penguin Books Call No: 823.9 D441c Availability:1 of 1 At Your Library Summary Note: DeSalvo (Virginia Woolf: The Impact of Childhood Sexual Abuse on Her Life and Work) examines here the psychological forces that inform creativity in this lively literary study. Focusing on three 20th-century novels and one play, she presents biographical research to demonstrate how each author exacted revenge through writing fiction. Barnes's play, The Actiphon, according to the author, was a thinly disguised history of the sexual assaults she had endured from her father and brothers. Henry Miller wrote Crazy Cock to strike back at a wife who obsessed him, and the negative portrait of Hermione in Lawrence's Women in Love, DeSalvo argues, was based on former lover Lady Ottoline Morrell. DeSalvo also suggests provocatively that Leonard Woolf's characterization of his wife, Virginia, in The Wise Virgins, as frigid was inaccurate; rather, it was Leonard who was repelled by Virginia's sexual needs. Illustrations not seen by PW. Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc. -From Publisher's Weekly.
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2020., 07:20:23, Bespeak Audio Editions Edition: Unabridged. Click to access digital title. Summary Note: A moving memoir about growing up with a gay father in the 1980s, and a tribute to the power of truth, humour, acceptance and familial love. Alison Wearing led a largely carefree childhood until she learned, at the age of 12, that her family was a little more complex than she had realized. Sure her father had always been unusual compared to the other dads in the neighbourhood: he loved to bake croissants, wear silk pyjamas around the house, and skip down the street singing songs from Gilbert and Sullivan operettas. But when he came out of the closet in the 1970s, when homosexuality was still a cardinal taboo, it was a shock to everyone in the quiet community of Peterborough, Ontario, especially to his wife and three children. Alison's father was a professor of political science and amateur choral conductor, her mother was an accomplished pianist and marathon runner, and together they had fed the family a steady diet of arts, adventures, mishaps, normal frustrations and inexhaustible laughter. Yet despite these agreeable circumstances, Joe's internal life was haunted by conflicting desires. As he began to explore and understand the truth about himself, he became determined to find a way to live both as a gay man and also a devoted father, something almost unheard of at the time. Through extraordinary excerpts from his own letters and journals from the years of his coming out, we read of Joe's private struggle to make sense and beauty of his life, to take inspiration from an evolving society and become part of the vanguard of the gay revolution in Canada. Confessions of a Fairy's Daughter is also the story of "coming out" as the daughter of a gay father. Already wrestling with an adolescent's search for identity when her father came out of the closet, Alison promptly "went in," concealing his sexual orientation from her friends and spinning extravagant stories about all of the "great straight things" they did together. Over time, Alison came to see that life with her father was surprisingly interesting and entertaining, even oddly inspiring, and in fact, there was nothing to hide. Balancing intimacy, history and downright hilarity, Confessions of a Fairy's Daughter is a captivating tale of family life: deliciously imperfect, riotously challenging, and full of life's great lessons in love. Alison brings her story to life with a skillfully light touch in this warm, heartfelt and revelatory memoir. Bespeak Audio Editions brings Canadian voices to the world with audiobook editions of some of the country's greatest works of literature, performed by Canadian actors.
![Confessions of a fairy's daughter [eAudiobook] : Growing up with a gay dad](/Library/images/~imageCT102471.JPG "Confessions of a fairy's daughter [eAudiobook] : Growing up with a gay dad")
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c1944., J.B. Lippincott company Call No: Fic Gra Edition: 1st ed. Availability:1 of 1 At Your Library
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2007., W.W. Norton Call No: Bio A355m Availability:1 of 1 At Your LibraryClick here to watch Summary Note: The beloved author of Little Women was torn between pleasing her idealistic father and planting her feet in the material world. Now, Louisa May Alcott's name is known universally; yet, during her youth, the famous Alcott was her father, Bronson--an eminent teacher, lecturer, and friend of Emerson and Thoreau. Willful and exuberant, Louisa flew in the face of all her father's theories of child rearing. She, in turn, could not understand the frugal life Bronson preached, which reached its epitome in the failed utopian community of Fruitlands. In a family that insisted on self-denial and spiritual striving, Louisa dreamed of wealth and fame. At the same time, like most daughters, she wanted her father's approval. This story of their tense yet loving relationship adds dimensions to Louisa's life, her work, and the relationships of fathers and daughters.--From publisher description.
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2009., General, Key Porter Books Call No: Bio M551m Availability:1 of 1 At Your Library Summary Note: This book chronicles Menziesœs transformative journey with her mother as words fail and the very nature of communication is redefined. Family dynamics among sisters and brothers come to the fore as the roles and responsibilities of the parent shift to the children: from moving their mother to a seniors' residence to signing a medical power of attorney to the matriarch's physical decline, to her safe passage into death. Menzies and her siblings experience growing old--and growing up--in touching and heart-wrenching ways.
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2020., Random House, Inc. Edition: eBook ed. Connect to this eBook title Summary Note: "...A searing, brilliantly-written memoir about a destructive and cunning mother; reads like a novel..." --Margaret Atwood via Twitter In this award-winning memoir, two sisters reckon with the decline and death of their outlandishly tyrannical mother and with the care of their psychologically terrorized father, all relayed with dark humor and brutal honesty. When her elderly mother is hospitalized unexpectedly, Vicki Laveau-Harvie and her sister travel to their parents' ranch home in Alberta, Canada, to help their father. Estranged from their parents for many years, they are horrified by what they discover on their arrival. For years their mother has camouflaged her manic delusions and savage unpredictability, and over the decades she has managed to shut herself and her husband away from the outside world, systematically starving him and making him a virtual prisoner in his own home. Rearranging their lives to be the daughters they were never allowed to be, the sisters focus their efforts on helping their father cope with the unending manipulations of their mother and encounter all the pressures that come with caring for elderly parents. And at every step they have to contend with their mother, whose favorite phrase during their childhood was: "I'll get you and you won't even know I'm doing it." Set against the natural world of the Canadian foothills ("in winter the cold will kill you, nothing personal"), this memoir--at once dark and hopeful--shatters precedents about grief, anger, and family trauma with surprising tenderness and humor.
![The erratics [eBook] : a memoir](/Library/images/~imageCT101307.JPG "The erratics [eBook] : a memoir")
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By Zeppa, Jamiec2011., Adult, Alfred A. Knopf Canada Call No: Fic Zep Edition: 1st ed. Availability:1 of 1 At Your Library Summary Note: "1942: Her mother's death left Grace Turner detached from the world until she became pregnant. Now, she's fallen in love with her baby boy but is locked in combat with her sister-in-law over his care. Wanting an independent life for herself and her son, Grace leaves Sault Ste. Marie to find work, and a place of her own, in southern Ontario. But she worries: when she returns for her baby, will her brother and sister-in-law give him up? 1957: Teenaged Dean Turner breaks open a locked box and finds adoption papers with a birth certificate for Daniel Turner, son of Grace Turner and an unknown father. His parents deny that he is adopted, but four years later, Dean leaves home to find the mysterious Grace. 1961: Laura falls in love with Dean Turner soon after he sits down at her table in the Queen Street Eaton's cafeteria, but he disappears as suddenly and as devastatingly as he appeared. When she encounters him in Sault Ste. Marie three years later, she is determined not to let him slip away again. 1973: Eight-year-old Dawn Turner waits for her father one morning at the front door of her grandparents' house. Dawn and her little brother are finally starting a life with their father, Dean, and his new wife. But when the new beginning doesn't work out, she and Jimmy end up back with their grandparents. As Dawn grows up, she must work to understand her family's mysteries and disappearing acts before she loses track of herself completely. Jamie Zeppa paints a tender and perceptive portrait of the unconventional, though not entirely dysfunctional, Turner family. Rich with mystery, broken promises and in the end, some mending of hearts, Every Time We Say Goodbye explores what it means to leave, to be left, to be absent; what connects parents and children, brothers and sisters, husbands and wives - and what drives them apart."--Inside jacket.
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2021., A. Knopf Call No: Fic Toe Availability:1 of 1 At Your Library Summary Note: Fight Night is told in the unforgettable and instantly classic voice of Swiv, a nine-year-old living in Toronto with her pregnant mother, an actor who is raising Swiv while taking care of her own elderly, frail, yet extraordinarily lively mother, Elvira. When Swiv is temporarily kicked out of school, her Grandma becomes her teacher, and gives her an assignment: to write a letter to Swiv's absent father about life in the household during the last trimester of the pregnancy. In turn, Swiv gives an assignment to Grandma: to write a letter to "Gord," her unborn grandchild (and Swiv's soon-to-be brother or sister). "You are a small thing," Grandma writes to Gord, "but you must learn to fight." Through the astonishing, headlong rush of Swiv's voice as she records her thoughts and observations, Fight Night unspools the pain, love, laughter, and above all, will to fight across three generations of women in a close-knit family. It is also a poignant love letter to the wise, exasperating, and irrepresible woman at the heart of the family, Swiv's Grandma: someone who knows acutely what it costs to live in this world, yet has found a way--painfully, ferociously--to love and fight to the end, on her own terms.
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2020., HarperCollins Call No: Fic Goo Availability:1 of 1 At Your Library Summary Note: French-Canadian factions renew Quebec's fight to gain independence from Canada. Wild and beautiful Véronique Fortin, daughter of a radical French- Canadian separatist who was convicted of kidnapping and murdering a prominent politician in 1970, shares her father's cause. She harbors no moral quandaries about flouting laws against smuggling, thievery, or terror to achieve political goals. So it is a surprise to everyone when she falls for James Phénix, a fluently bi-lingual journalist of French-Canadian heritage, inhabits both worlds comfortably, and opposes Quebec separatism. Their love affair is as passionate as it is politically charged and they lie in a constant struggle between love and morals. At the same time, James's older sister Elodie Phénix, one of the Duplessis Orphans, becomes involved with a coalition demanding justice and reparations for their suffering in the 1950's when Quebec's orphanages were converted to mental hospitals. This heinous political act of Premier Maurice Duplessis affected 5000 children in the province. Two decades later they still struggle to bind their wounds. Elodie and Véronique are kindred spirits, both constrained by their pasts, but desperate to move forward, and the two become friends on their parallel journeys. And Véronique is the only person Elodie can rely on as she slowly wades into the fight for retribution, reliving all her trauma along the way, and her familial relationships begin to strain. The Forgotten Daughter is a moving portrait of true love, familial bonds, and persistence in the face of injustice. And as each character is pushed to their moral brink, the will discover exactly which lines they'll cross-and just how far they'll go for what they believe in
