New ebooks From Canadian Indies

9781552666692_cover Enlarge Cover
0 of 5
0 ratings
rated!
rated!
list price: $20.99
edition:eBook
also available: Paperback
category: Fiction
published: Apr 2014
ISBN:9781552666692
publisher: Roseway Publishing

Grist

by Linda Little

tagged: historical
Description

“This is the story of how you were loved,” Penelope MacLaughlin whispers to her granddaughter.

Penelope MacLaughlin marries a miller and gradually discovers he is not as she imagined. Nonetheless she remains determined to make the best of life at the lonely mill up the Gunn Brook as she struggles to build a home around her husband’s eccentricities. His increasing absence leaves Penelope to run the mill herself, providing her with a living but also destroying the people she loves most. Penelope struggles with loss and isolation and suffers the gradual erosion of her sense of self. A series of betrayals leaves her with nothing but the mill and her determination to save her grandchildren from their disturbed father. While she can prepare her grandsons for independence, her granddaughter is too young and so receives the greater gift: the story that made them all.

About the Author
Linda Little's life has been unlike Jackson Bigney's in nearly every way. She grew up on a small farm in Hawkesbury, Ontario, and studied at Queen's University in Kingston and at Memorial University in St. John's. After a few months in English Harbour, on Trinity Bay, she moved to a small farm near River John, Nova Scotia. Like Jackson, she found she had little taste for farm chores; she quit raising cows and now keeps only pigs, chickens, and turkeys during the summer. Like Jackson, she, too, is a terrible fiddle player -- so terrible that she has been known to use her rendition of "Skye Boat Song" as revenge. Since childhood, Linda Little has been fascinated by the emotional life of men, especially the tenderness between comrades, both real and fictional. She has found these intense feelings all the more compelling because they are usually concealed and seldom glimpsed by others and has built much of her fiction on the exploration of what lies behind these moments. Strong Hollow is Linda Little's first novel. Her short fiction has previously appeared in literary journals and anthologies, including Descant, the Antigonish Review, and The Journey Prize Anthology.
Contributor Notes

Linda Little’s novels include Scotch River, which won the Raddall Atlantic Fiction Prize, and Strong Hollow, which was nominated for the Amazon.ca First Novel Award. She has published short stories in a variety of literary magazines and in The Penguin Book of Short Stories by Canadian Women. She lives in River John, Nova Scotia.

Editorial Review

“An epic story by a gifted writer. There are moments in Linda Little's Grist that are breathtaking in both thought and lyricism.”

— Donna Morrissey, author of The Deception of Livvy Higgs

"Linda Little lays bare the hard joys, grit and heartache of women’s lives in the rural Maritimes before and during the Great War. Her writing is exquisite. Gripping, gorgeously imagined and positively haunting, Grist is a tour de force — a novel not just to like but to love. I couldn’t put it down.”

— Carol Bruneau, author of Glass Voices and Purple for Sky

Buy the e-book:

X
Contacting facebook
Please wait...