Two women. One week in August. One hundred and thirty years apart.
2017 Shortly after Maggie Breen loses custody of her children in an ugly divorce, her mother passes away. The double loss leaves Maggie reeling and desperate to escape everyday life. Maggie’s never been east of Toronto, but she offers to return her parents’ ashes to their hearts’ home—Newfoundland—and opts to leave her meds behind when she does. As she sets out across the rugged landscape where her parents’ roots run deep, the act of bringing them home is complicated by family secrets and the consequences of Maggie’s decisions catch up with her.
1887 For Susan Short, better known as Shorty, life in Newfoundland’s harsh Great Northern Peninsula runs a lot smoother for her and the children when her husband Lorne is away. A good novel provides the escape she longs for, but reading is something Lorne has forbidden her and their children to do. When Lorne returns home and learns his rules have been broken, Shorty’s life is upended and she is forced into action to keep her children safe. Fiction collides with Newfoundland legend in The Art of Getting Lost andFound, as we follow two mothers in search of better lives—one trying to get lost, the other found, both on separate journeys that lead to the shores of Sally’s Cove.
Glenna Turnbull’s short fiction has appeared in several of Canada’s finest literary journals, including The New Quarterly, Prism International, and Riddle Fence. She was awarded the 2023 Jacob Zilber Fiction Prize, was an honourable mention for the Peter Hinchcliffe Award, and is featured in The Best Canadian Short Stories 2025 anthology. She is a UBC Okanagan graduate, having put herself through school as a self-employed single parent. She works as a freelance writer, photographer, and stained-glass artist living in Kelowna, British Columbia with her two dogs, close to her grown sons. She is a domestic abuse survivor and has first-hand experience living with mental health issues. This is Glenna’s debut novel.
