Maud and Me

Book excerpt: "Maud and Me" is a 68,000-word novel set in the early 1980's in Marathon, a small mining town in Northwestern Ontario. Nicole LeClair, a middle-aged minister's wife has a secret: she receives visits from Lucy Maud Montgomery, also a minister's wife and famed author of Anne of Green Gables. Since Maud has been dead for four decades, Nicole is unsure if this apparition is a vision, a ghost, or a hallucination brought on by her own growing malaise. But one thing that she is sure of is that neither her husband Adam, nor the people in their church would approve. In the early 1980's, the women's movement hasn't yet reached conservative Northwestern Ontario. Nicole deals with her frustrations through her painting and subversive sense of humour, even as she tries outwardly to please everyone: her well-meaning husband Adam, her angry, distant mother, and the congregation of Marathon Community Fellowship. When she becomes desperate for someone who understands, Maud shows up in her garden. Over cups of tea and long drives along the north shore of Lake Superior, they compare notes and hilarious observations about congregational life. But then news of her father's death and the discovery of her mother's betrayal drive Nicole to question everything about her family, her life, and even Maud.