Ile D'Or

By Mary Lou Dickinson

Shortly after the first referendum on Quebec separation, four people in their forties encounter each other in Ile d’Or, the town where all of them grew up. The novel is about gold and greed and renewal and hope. About people who emerge from a frontier existence into the society of the late twentieth century with the need to discover how their contemporary lives connect with their pasts: how growing up in a mining town in northern Quebec in the 1930s through 1950s shaped who they are today. They do this with the hope that confronting the past may better equip them for moving on with their stalled lives. Their need to be reconciled with themselves can only be satisfied through a reconciliation with the community in which they grew up. A vibrant novel that deals with language, community and the politics of Canada as it explores the hardscrabble life of a mining town—a company town—and the psychological fallout for the adults and children who live there.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Inanna Poetry and Fiction Series
• Release date: Nov 1, 2012
• ISBN: 9781771330190

Mary Lou Dickinson

Mary Lou Dickinson graduated with a Master in Library Science from the University of Toronto and worked for many years as a crisis counsellor. Her fiction has been published in the University of Windsor Review, Descant, Waves, Grain, Northern Journey, Impulse, Writ and broadcast on CBC Radio. Her writing was also included in the anthology, We Who Can Fly: Poems, Essays and Memories in Honour of Adele Wiseman. Mary Lou Dickinson lives in Toronto.

Book preview