Winner, IPPY Award for Best First Book - Fiction and Margaret and John Savage First Book Award for Fiction
Runner-up, Leacock Medal for Humour
Shortlisted, Jim Connors Dartmouth Book Award and Kobo Emerging Writer Prize for Literary Fiction
Long-Shortlisted, 2020 Relit Award (Novel Category)
When Stacey Fortune is diagnosed with three highly unpredictable — and inoperable — brain tumours, she abandons the crumbling glamour of her life in Toronto for her mother Effie's scruffy trailer in rural Cape Breton. Back home, she's known as Crow, and everybody suspects that her family is cursed.
With her future all but sealed, Crow decides to go down in a blaze of unforgettable glory by writing a memoir that will raise eyebrows and drop jaws. She'll dig up "the dirt" on her family tree, including the supposed curse, and uncover the truth about her mysterious father, who disappeared a month before she was born.
But first, Crow must contend with an eclectic assortment of characters, including her gossipy Aunt Peggy, hedonistic party-pal Char, homebound best friend Allie, and high-school flame Willy. She'll also have to figure out how to live with her mother and how to muddle through the unsettling visual disturbances that are becoming more and more vivid each day.
Witty, energetic, and crackling with sharp Cape Breton humour, Crow is a story of big twists, big personalities, big drama, and even bigger heart.
Paperback, 312 pages
Amy Spurway was born and raised on Cape Breton Island, where, at the age of eleven, she landed her first writing and performing gigs with CBC Radio. Amy holds a B.A. in English from the University of New Brunswick, and a degree in Radio & Television Arts (writing concentration) from Ryerson University. She has worked as a freelance writer, communications consultant, editor, and performer. Her work has appeared in Today's Parent, the Toronto Star, Babble, and Elephant Journal, as well as in the realms of advertising, marketing, non-profit and corporate communications, education, health, and politics. Amy lives in Dartmouth, Nova Scotia, with her husband Matthew, and their three daughters.
