WELCOME TO THE WEBSITE OF
THE AUTHOR OF The Long Point County Series
ABOUT THE BOOKin a Manor of SpeakingEven after twenty years, the tight-knit Ontario community of Long Point County remains haunted by the tragic Lake Erie shipwreck that took place just off its coast in 1852. Several of its survivors still live among them even now, having been adopted into local families after washing ashore. Even the sunken wreckage of the ship itself had changed lives, and not for the better—most notably that of one of its most promising young men, drawn by the dangerous lure of its rumoured treasures.
Still, no one in town had been more affected by the tragedy than local historian Becky McCormack. She’d dedicated the past two decades of her life to intensive research in the hopes of uncovering, at last, the identities of each person who’d been lost on that horrible day and ensuring that none would remain unmourned or forgotten, whether buried namelessly in the local cemetery or lost to Lake Erie’s unforgiving waters. No longer young by anybody’s standards, and with dementia beginning to sink its claws into her once razor-sharp mind, Becky’s family and friends can now only hope that she’ll finish her life’s work before it’s too late, attaining the closure and peace she’s sought on behalf of others for so long. And in doing so … finally reclaim her own. |
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ABOUT THE BOOKAnd Still the Flowers GrowOn a sunny August afternoon in 1852, on the northern coast of Lake Erie, two dozen bodies from the ill-fated Atlantic Paddle Steamer shipwreck washed ashore and were rapidly retrieved from their watery graves by pioneer farmers homesteading on the Long Point peninsula. Some passengers did survive to tell their stories. While the Long Point families were most receptive to guiding and supporting some of these survivors with what was left of their tattered lives, they never could have imagined how their own lives would be so intimately affected by these destitute survivors. For Mary O'Malley and her three small children, her quest to discover the fate of her missing husband would take a devastating and surprising turn. Fellow passengers, Toby Ryan, a restless 19 year old Irish immigrant had stored up enough hate, revenge and anger to keep him afloat for as long as it took, the deadly consequences of his own unfinished business hanging precariously in the balance.
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Joan McNamee
Joan McNamee, M.A., has worked as a nurse, flight attendant, and University Instructor throughout her professional life. It has been her good fortune to share her life with her husband Don of 58 years while raising five children and enjoying the arrival of their thirteen grandchildren. Her love of writing, and her pleasure and enjoyment of family, friends and neighbours has helped focus her writer's curiosity and appreciation on trying to understand the scope of inter-personal relationships throughout one's lifetime. She is quick to credit her own approach to these issues as primarily inherited family traditions and her gentle rearing as far back as her great, great grandparents, pioneers along the Lake Erie coast.
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