Nothing in Truth Can Harm Us : A Novel

Eva’s dad is dead. Her mother isn’t, but ought to be, says Aunt Mathilde. Time to move on . . .

Moving from Nova Scotia, Eva tries not to care. She’s already dropped out of school and is washing dishes for a living. Despite her aunt’s encouragement, she can’t speak French, the mother tongue of her Acadian family, but Mathilde insists they have to go to Montreal—now.

Mathilde has provided reluctant care for her niece for more than a decade, despite the fact that she hates her sister so much, even her name is banned in her presence. Mathilde spends her evenings painting, drinking and writing love letters to a long-gone man, dreaming of what might have been.

An old photograph of a happy toddler with dimples is taped to the wall by Gaby’s bunk in the Nova Institute for Women. With her parole hearing weeks away, Gaby doesn’t have any plans or hopes for a future outside of prison beyond one: to find her daughter.

Whether it is on the French Shore, Halifax or Montreal, all three women can’t escape the spectre of Adam, Eva’s charming, dead father, and the unspoken memories of blood and loss.