Nothing in Truth Can Harm Us

Nothing in Truth Can Harm Us
A novel

Author: Colleen René

Eva’s dad is dead. Her mother isn’t, but ought to be, at least according to Aunt Maddie. Time to move on . . .

Bound by blood and loss, three women struggle to rebuild relationships fractured by a decade-old tragedy. 

When her aunt insists on a move from Nova Scotia to Montreal, eighteen-year-old Eva tries not to care. After all, she’s already dropped out of school and is washing dishes for a living. But she can’t speak French, the mother tongue of her Acadian family, and doesn’t fit into the local neo-grunge scene of student manifestos and drug-fueled parties.

Maddie has provided reluctant care for her niece for more than a decade, despite the loathing she feels for Eva’s mother. Maddie spends her evenings drinking and writing love letters to a long-gone man, dreaming of what might have been. 

An old photograph of a happy seven-year-old with dimples is taped to the wall above Gaby’s bunk in the Nova Institution for Women. With her parole hearing weeks away, Gaby doesn’t have any plans or hopes for a future outside of prison beyond one: to find her daughter.

Whether on the French Shore, in Truro or Montreal, all three women are trapped by the spectre of Adam, Eva’s charming, dead father.

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• Fiction, 272pp
• ISBN 978-1-990160-22-6 (paperback)
• ISBN 978-1-990160-23-3 (e-book)
• 5.5″ x 8.5″
• To be published September 2023
• Paperback: CA $22.95 / US $18.95
• Ebook: CA $15.95 / US $13.95