Lesley Crewe

The author of Relative Happiness—now an award-winning film—“shines a light on the secrets and lies that bind generations of Cape Breton families” (Toronto Star).
 
The story begins with Nell, the “spinster on the hill” near St. Peter’s, Cape Breton. Scarred by her own childhood, she swears she could never love a child and that she will never marry, denying herself...

“A warm-hearted story of one woman’s journey from a dark and abusive childhood into the light of acceptance and love” from the author of Relative Happiness (Atlantic Books Today).
 
Can you really move forward without putting the past to rest?
 
Grace Willingdon has everything she needs. For fifteen years she’s lived in a trailer overlooking Bras d’Or...

TRADITIONS, CREATED AND SUBVERTED. Love, nurtured and destroyed. Friendships, marriages, and the wild beauty of Cape Breton Island. And above all, kin, in all its convoluted forms. In Kin, bestselling author Lesley Crewe traces the tangled lines of loyalty, tragedy, joy, and love through three generations of families. Beginning with Annie Macdonald, an effervescent seven-year-old living in Glace Bay in the 1930s, and ending with Annie's great-niece...

The South End house where Elsie Brooks and her big, complicated family live is bursting with secrets. Elsie's banished husband lives in the basement. Her lonely sister lives in the attic. Her twenty-something daughters come and go as they please. And when the renegade ninety-one-year-old archaeologist they all know as Aunt Hildy comes home to die, the poor old place becomes impossibly full-of hidden meanings and hidden treasure, of murder and mystery....

Bestselling author of The Spoon Stealer brings more of her sharp Cape Breton wit to the follow-up non-fiction collection to Leacock—longlisted Are You Kidding Me?! I Kid You Not! is a follow-up to bestselling author Lesley Crewe's first hit column-and-essay collection, Are You Kidding Me?! Here Lesley is hilarious and insightful as ever, giving us her take on everything from hockey to wildlife to the ache of missing our ancestors in ninety essays....

Born into a basket of clean sheets-ruining a perfectly good load of laundry-Emmeline never quite fit in on her family's rural Nova Scotian farm. After suffering multiple losses in the First World War, her family became so heavy with grief, toxicity, and mental illness that Emmeline felt their weight smothering her. And so, she fled across the Atlantic and built her life in England. Now she is retired and living in a small coastal town with her best...