As a child, Kate Stong Smythe drew castles. Now, at thirty-five, she’s found herself hard-edged and uncompromising, designing slick condos in Griffintown, a gentrified working-class neighbourhood of Montreal.
When Kate’s mother dies, she calls out five mysterious names from her deathbed, propelling Kate on a journey to unravel the mysterious dreams she’s had since childhood. She’s met with a shock when she finds the five names in her own family genealogy books, tied to faces she knows from her strange flashbacks. Who are these women, and why have they haunted her dreams since she was a little girl?
Kate’s unsettling visions take her from her home in Montreal to an abandoned farmhouse in the northern suburbs of Toronto, increasingly consumed by her ties to the past and the ancestral hardness that is holding her hostage
“This novel honours the Stong family story with depth and respect, revealing how ancestry, silence, and place connect generations.”
-Allison White, Toronto Region Conservation Authority
Inspired by the “pure vida” while living in Costa Rica, Susan Grundy veered from her thirty-year career in marketing to writing stories about the weight of emotional distress and how to step into an easier way of being. After her short fiction appeared in the Danforth Review and Montréal Writes, Susan dove into Mad Sisters, a highly personalized account of her caregiving journey for an older sister diagnosed with schizophrenia at the age of thirteen. She recently completed a second novel (Black Creek, literary fiction) about an architect who breaks free from a painful ancestral cycle in her female lineage. When not at her desk, Susan can be found walking in nature towards a café. She divides her time between Montreal and London.
She dismissed the moaning from the other side of the wall and
studied the architectural drawing on her screen. Hospital visiting
hours ended soon, but Kate refused to leave until she completed her
review of the latest Griffin project, however long that might take.
Bells buzzed at the nursing station, medication trolleys rattled down
the hall, and the patient next door groaned on.
Kate focused on the 3D virtual model of a condo layout for Griffin
Phase 4. To her, the background whirr was no more distracting than
an airport departure lounge. The chemical compounds of antiseptic,
however, irritated Kate’s sinuses and stung her eyes, impossible to
ignore. Earlier that evening, she opened the window a crack defying
a regulation to keep it shut. The mid-July temperature in Montreal
had broken a record, stressing the hospital’s antiquated ventilation
system to the max.
Kate scrolled through more drawings and paused at the two bedroom layout. Her forehead wrinkled with displeasure. The engineer, almost twice her age, had neglected to include detail for the windows on the north wall. He hadn’t taken the time to review his work, an error she would never make and one he would likely defend. She checked the time. Seven-thirty pm. The argument with the engineer would have to wait until morning.
Pushing away from the screen, she drummed her fingers on the metal arm of the visitor chair that had become her makeshift office over the past two weeks. She wondered if the fridge in her kitchen held anything edible. Was there enough coffee for the morning? A faint tease of cool air from the vent tickled the back of her neck.
She shivered and looked up. Her mother, wide awake, stared at the ceiling. Her lips were moving.
“Are you there?”
The voice was low and husky, the first words Kate had heard from her mother that evening. A thin arm appeared from under the sheet. The hand beckoned, summoning Kate. She rose from her chair and approached the bed.
The cardiologist had diagnosed her mother’s silence as vascular dementia, a condition that put her at high risk for strokes or worse, a fatal heart attack. Kate knew better. Confusion was normal for a woman in her early seventies, especially after the loss of a husband who had managed their lives for decades. This recent development, the reticence to speak, was not surprising. Kate had been raised in silence, in a home of stifled emotion. Her mother wasn’t crazy; she was bullheaded and stoic, annoyed by the inconvenience of being stuck in the hospital on account of a minor stroke. Kate steadied the restless hand and followed her mother’s stare to a circular water stain on the ceiling, which in the dim light reminded her of the anguish expressed by the wide-open mouth in Edvard Munch’s painting, The Scream.
“It’s me, Mom. Katlin.”
“I know exactly who you are.”
The familiar sharpness reassured Kate. Her stomach grumbled. She reached for the package of saltines on the food tray.
The bony fingers on the sheet twitched. “Is Mother here?”
Kate stiffened. Her grandmother had died over forty years ago. She moved closer to the pillow. Her mother’s breathing sounded irregular, shallow. Not dementia, just a half-awake dream, maybe a nightmare. Kate knew all about hypnagogic hallucinations, although she’d never shared hers with anyone. Must be genetic, she thought. Kate bit into a cracker and pulled on the cord attached to the fluorescent tube fixture attached to the wall. A sickly blue light washed over her mother’s face. Kate tensed, unable to swallow the chewed piece of cracker. The black pinpoints in her mother’s pupils oscillated at hyper speed and she muttered incoherently. Kate was still clutching the cord when the alarm on the monitor started up, a ten second interval beep usually triggered by an empty IV bag. This bag, however, appeared almost full. Random numbers flashed across the screen. No clues there. She looked over at the door, unsure what to do, then pressed the call bell for help.
“Black Creek delivers a fascinating multi-generational story centered on the lives of a compelling line of women who endured epic journeys and tumultuous times. Through their stories, their present-day ancestor Kate grapples with how the legacies of these struggles have shaped the woman she is as she navigates contemporary urban upheavals and faces critical choices about her future.”
– Leslie Kern, author of Feminist City: A Field Guide’
“Black Creek is a haunting, familial history of Toronto personalized by grief. Both warning and celebration, it explores how the ghosts of the women who came before us shape our lives, either trapping us in old patterns, or giving us the love to live freely in the present.”
-Paola Ferrante, Governor General’s Award finalist for Her Body Among Animals
“This novel honours the Stong family story with depth and respect, revealing how ancestry, silence, and place connect generations.”
-Allison White, Toronto Region Conservation Authority
