Marie Mossman packed local stories and family secrets into her brain, when a child in Nova Scotia. She accompanied her parents on their drop-in visits to relatives and friends along winding main roads and dusty rural offshoots, by boat to island communities. The wistful stories she overheard mellowed in her heart. The more shocking ones remained in her brain. Elements of the childhood treasure trove have passed, transformed, into this novel. Ms. Mossman taught school and practised speech-language pathology. Success in a contest with a non-fiction piece, "Gang of Three Canucks Hunts Peking Duck", encouraged her desire to write. She has participated in writing seminars, classes, and writing groups since 2010. She completed a series of articles for The Grapevine, a local newspaper. Her more recent research for "A Rebel for Her Time" led her beyond paper and interviews to World War I sites in France and Belgium. Since 2017, she has focused on research and the ephemeral skill of writing with honesty, interest, and grace.