Home Truths

Jill MacLean

Sept 2010 · DCB

About this eBook

Brick’s home life is a horror show. His dad has a temper like a pressure valve; you never know when he’s going to blow. His mom’s a self-absorbed flake who leaves the care of his little sister to Brick. A guy could go crazy with all that tension. It’s no wonder Brick has to let off a little steam of his own once in a while. It’s not like he’s anything remotely like his dad. The day he turns sixteen, Brick’s out of there. This summer he’s going to take up Mr. Larkin’s offer of work, even though he’s been forbidden to “fraternize with the neighbors.” And he’s going to earn enough money to escape. Get out and never look back. But who will his dad turn to when he doesn’t have a son to kick around anymore?

A compulsive read by a two-time winner of the Ann Connor Brimer Award, Home Truths is a revealing portrait of a bully-in-training and his journey to redemption.

About the author

Shortly after the publication of her 2003 poetry collection, The Brevity of Red (2003), Jill MacLean‘s nine-year-old grandson Stuart asked her to write him a book with hockey and Skidoos in it. The result was The Nine Lives of Travis Keating (2008) which won the 2009 Ann Connor Brimer Award, was shortlisted for the Canadian Library Association Book of the Year for Children, 2010 Hackmatack, Silver Birch and Diamond Willow Awards, and was a KIND Children’s Honorable Mention Book for the Humane Society of the United States. Its 2009 sequel, The Present Tense of Prinny Murphy, won the 2010 Ann Connor Brimer Award. Both books are set in Newfoundland, where Jill’s family lived for eighteen years. Jill now makes her home in Nova Scotia, which is the setting for her third novel. Always an avid reader, she is delighted to rediscover the world of children’s literature. In her free time she gardens, canoes and hikes.