Kit's Law

Finalist, Chapters/Books in Canada First Novel Award It is the 1950s and just outside of the Newfoundland fishing village of Haire's Hollow, fourteen-year-old Kit Pitman lives with her mentally handicapped mother, Josie, both of them cared for and protected by Kit's grandmother Lizzie. The three live a life of hardship, but there is a lot of love in this family. A tragic chain of events leads to demands that Josie be sent to an institution and Kit to an orphanage. Alliances are formed with an odd assortment of characters and the village is thrown into a turbulent upheaval that tests the strength of Kit's relationships with her friends and her family. Narrated by the incomparable Mary Walsh.

Donna Morrissey (b. 1956) grew up in the isolated western Newfoundland community of The Beaches, where, she says, "There were twelve families and we didn't talk to six of them." She studied at memorial University in St. John's, lived in various other parts of Canada, and makes her home in Halifax. Her first novel, Kit's Law (Penguin, 1999), the source of "Grieving Nan," won the National Booksellers Association Libris Award and garnered international praise.