Our Daily Bread

A novel about what happens when we view our neighbours as "The Other" and the transformative power of unlikely friendships; Our Daily Bread is inspired by the true story of the Goler Clan of Nova Scotia.

The God-fearing people of Gideon shun the Erskine Clan, who have lived on North Mountain in poverty, secrecy and isolation, believing their neighbours to be beyond salvation. "That's the mountain," they say. "What do you expect from those people?"

Yet in both groups nearly everyone has secrets and nothing is as it seems.

On the mountain, Albert Erskine dreams of a better and safer life for his younger brothers and sisters. He lives by his code: "You keep your secrets to yourself and you keep your weaknesses a secret and your hurts a secret and your dreams you bury double deep."

In town, young Ivy Evans is relentlessly bullied by her classmates. Though her father, Tom, is a well-liked local, his troubled marriage to a restless outsider is a source of gossip. As rumors and innuendo about the Evans family spread, Ivy seeks refuge in Dorothy Carlisle, an independent-minded widow who runs a local antique store.

When Albert ventures down the mountain and seizes on the Evanses' family crisis as an opportunity to befriend Ivy's vulnerable teenage brother, Bobby, he sets in motion a chain of events that changes everything.

REVIEWS:

*Starred Review* " Powerful, harrowing, and deeply unsettling. It keeps you reading as your blood pressure mounts...proceeds like a noose gradually tightening...stark, beautiful, sad and frankly terrifying...finely crafted, with careful attention to characterization, style, and pacing. It succeeds on every level." --Quill & Quire September 1, 2011
From the Publisher
Review

"Powerful, harrowing, and deeply unsettling. It keeps you reading as your blood pressure mounts... proceeds like a noose gradually tightening... stark, beautiful, sad and frankly terrifying... finely crafted, with careful attention to characterization, style, and pacing. It succeeds on every level." -- The Quill & Quire

"Absorbing, strikingly-written, and subtly-honed . . . a page-turner!" -- Gordon Hauptfleisch

"Full of remarkable moments . . . a level of detail that puts us in the beating hearts of imperiled souls . . . simple, brave, powerful scenes, skillfully written with an anger no less effective for being tempered - scenes that sit with the soul long after the book is closed." -- Alan Cuymn, The Globe & Mail

Named as one of the "Very Best Books of 2011" by The Globe & Mail and the Boston Globe.

"Thrilling . . . unflinching . . . unforgettable. Davis makes us care about her characters . . . imaginatively transformed by exquisite prose. Her moral fiction calls us to empathize, read, imagine and hear. This is a story of getting lost in the woods, of meeting the monster and getting out alive." -- Jean Randich, Truthdig.com

"I'll never forget this book, the sunning power of the descriptions, the attention to detail, the riveting plot, the fully-realized characters--this is storytelling at its very best." -- Duff Brenna, author of The Book of Mamie, The Holy Book of the Beard, Too Cool

"From the first chapter of OUR DAILY BREAD...I was hooked--by the characters, by the flow, by the clean, rhythmic prose." -- Thomas E. Kennedy, author of The Copenhagen Quartet

"Rendered with gorgeous prose, this compact, fast-moving novel features an astonishing range of tones, from hope to heartbreak, from black humor to white-knuckle terror." -- Dexter Palmer, author of The Dream of Perpetual Motion

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