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.
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.
“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
