English

Darren Greer, reading from his book Just Beneath My Skin, this year's One Book Nova Scotia winner!
Thursday, October 29, 7:00 - 8:00 pm
Quiet Reading Room, Vaughan Memorial Library

Darren Greer grew up in several towns in Nova Scotia, including Greenfield and Liverpool. He studied literature at the University of King’s College, Halifax, as well as Carleton University, Ottawa. His first novel, Tyler’s Cape, was published in March 2001 to critical acclaim and was on the bestseller list of the Halifax Chronicle-Herald. Still Life with June was nominated for the Pearson Readers’ Choice Award at The Word On The Street, Toronto, in 2003 and is the Winner of the 2004 ReLit Award.

• Winner of the 2015 Thomas Raddall Atlantic Fiction Award (East Coast Literary Awards)
• Shortlisted for the 2015 Jim Connors Dartmouth Book Award (Atlantic Book Awards)

Just Beneath My Skin

In the small town of North River, every day that goes by bleeds into the next. Poverty begets hopelessness, hopelessness breeds violence, violence causes despair. The only way to change fate, a minister tells his son, is to leave.

The minister’s son, Jake MacNeil, chooses to ignore his father’s advice. Only when he realizes what has become of his life — working a grueling dead-end job, living with a drunk, friends with a murderer — does he decide to make something of himself. But nothing comes without a cost: in choosing freedom, Jake abandons his own son, Nathan, to the care of the boy’s abusive mother.

Years later, a reformed Jake comes back for Nathan, to finally set things right. But in North River, everything comes around again; and when a dangerous figure from the past becomes hell-bent on dragging the new Jake “back down where he belongs”, three generations of MacNeil men must come together to pay the full price of hope.

For more information about One Book Nova Scotia please visit their website http://1bns.ca/ !