Every word of Donna Morrisey’s memoir, Pluck, is a gem placed like stepping stones for the reader to follow, leading you along a life-path traversed only through sheer determination and resolve.
From its first page you become enamoured of the people who raised, supported, pushed, cajoled or loved this author into becoming one of Canada’s best literary voices.
Donna Morrisey was born and raised at The Upper Beaches, a minuscule outport in the White Bay on Newfoundland and Labrador’s north east coast. Isolated from the rest of the world, saltwater, earth and family were her entire life in a harsh place that stole babies and elders with equal vigour.
Young Donna, feeling the inadequacy and loneliness of being an outport girl found equal parts solace and knowledge, in books. Possessing insatiable curiosity, reading satisfied her desire to learn while filling the emptiness inside a child trying to understand herself and those around her.
Woefully unprepared, at age sixteen she is launched into the world beyond The Beaches and falls into the enthrall of the harrowing sixties’ hippy life. She blazes a zigzag path from home to other parts of the province and country, eventually picking up a husband, two babies and a social work degree despite obstacles that would leave a weaker woman shredded. She stumbles upon the right and wrong people, including the long-suffering May, and the mysterious mentor Elly, while holding fast to those who root her firmly to the earth— her parents, siblings and children.
“You’re dragging your own bag of bones, Dear. Go find your voice and write your own myth,” she is advised, and we are ever so grateful she listened because eventually it led her to writing this book.
With a voice as bold as the black earth it was harvested from, she weaves a tapestry of woe and misery, heartache and despair with one tough-as-diamond thread that holds the fabric together —love.
Donna’s story is a journey through the muck of life, from drugs to depression to determination and is, in essence, an easy read about hard things. If turning the pain of life into beauty is an artist’s purpose, then this book is a masterpiece. It could have been the flavour of tragedy if not for the laugh-out-loud humour peppered throughout. It is a memoir that reads like a novel, with a twist that will leave you gasping.
Pluck, by the immeasurably talented Donna Morrisey, is, unequivocally, a must-read, masterful, page-turner of a tale.
DONNA MORRISSEY is the author of six nationally bestselling novels. She has received awards in Canada and England, including the 2017 Thomas Raddall Atlantic Fiction Award and the 2017 Arthur Ellis Award for Best Crime Fiction for The Fortunate Brother. Her novel Sylvanus Now was shortlisted for the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize, and Livvy Higgs was chosen as a One Read pick for Nova Scotia in 2017. Her fiction has been translated into several different languages, including German, Italian, and Swedish. Born and raised in Newfoundland, she now lives in Halifax.
- Publisher : Viking (Sept. 14 2021)
- Language : English
- Paperback : 320 pages
- ISBN-10 : 0735239193
- ISBN-13 : 978-0735239197
Carolyn R. Parsons is a Newfoundland & Labrador author with a background in freelance journalism. In 2021 she was chosen as one of 125 authors from around the world to have her entire body of work launched to the moon on the Peregrine Mission via NASA and Astrobotic as part of their lunar time capsule Writers on the Moon. The launch is scheduled for June 2022. Her sixth book, Desolate, will be released through Engen Books in April 2022.
A perceptive review! I look forward to reading this one.
It is fantastic! I recommend it to everyone!
Her work never disappoints
I loved this book. Great review.
Just brilliant wasn’t it?