About this ebook
The Erskine Clan, long shunned by the people of Gideon, live in secrecy and isolation on North Mountain. For generations, the clan’s children have suffered unspeakable acts of abuse, incest and psychological torture. The intolerant, self-righteous Gideonites decline to intervene, believing their neighbours to be beyond salvation. Yet in both groups, nearly everyone has secrets, and nothing is as it seems.
Twenty-one-year-old Albert Erskine dreams of a better life and explains to his new friend, Bobby Evans, a teenager from town, the meaning of the “man’s code”: “You keep your secrets to yourself and you keep your weaknesses a secret and your hurts a secret and your dreams you bury double deep.” Bobby’s eight-year-old sister, Ivy, suffers from incessant bullying by her classmates. Her father, Tom Evans, a local bread delivery man, struggles to keep his troubledmarriage together. As rumours and innuendo about the Evans family spread, Ivy seeks refuge in the company of Dorothy Carlisle, an independent-minded widow who runs a local antiques store. When Albert ventures down from the mountain, he sets in motion a chain of events that changes everything.
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About the author
LAUREN B. DAVIS is the author of the bestselling and critically acclaimed novels The Stubborn Season, The Radiant City, Our Daily Bread—which was longlisted for the Scotiabank Giller Prize and named a best book of the year by both The Globe and Mail and The Boston Globe—and The Empty Room, as well as two collections of short stories, Rat Medicine & Other Unlikely Curatives and An Unrehearsed Desire. Born in Montreal, she now lives in Princeton, New Jersey.Web: laurenbdavis.comFacebook: Lauren B. Davis, AuthorTwitter: @Laurenbdavis