A funny, heart-warming ode to motherhood written by an award-winning journalist and humour columnist.

For Susan Lundy, motherhood began when she moved into her boyfriend's Salt Spring Island home at the age of twenty-one. Her new living arrangement came with furniture, a pair of kids, and a biting gerbil named Quasimodo. Susan was a career-oriented budding journalist, eager to write her way to fame and fortune. Becoming a mom was not part of her plan—at least not yet. But after surveying her new domicile with quiet horror at first, she grew into her new role, discarding many of the lessons her mother had given her about keeping house and inventing her own rules as she went along.

By the time her two daughters were born, Susan had already fallen deeply in love with motherhood. Moreover, she chronicled her family's topsy-turvy Gulf Island life in a collection of popular newspaper and magazine columns. Home on the Strange follows Susan's journey from pregnancy to parenthood, career milestones to birds-and-bees talks, separation to new love at mid-life, and cross-country road trips to empty nesting during a global pandemic. Charming, poignant, and frequently hilarious, this is the perfect book for mothers or moms-to-be at any stage of their journey.

Susan Lundy is an award-winning journalist, editor, and freelance writer. She is a two-time recipient of the prestigious Jack Webster Award of Distinction and has won more than 25 writing, design, and project awards. After working for many years at the Gulf Islands Driftwood, she now focuses on freelance writing, specializing in travel and personal narrative. She has a degree in creative writing and journalism from the University of Victoria, is the editor of Soar and Tweed magazines, and writes a column on family life for several newspapers. Susan divides her time between Victoria and Salt Spring Island, British Columbia, and Calgary, Alberta.

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"A delightful big-hearted book full of wit and wisdom that had me bursting into laughter every other page. Read this book no matter what stage of life you’re at—it will brighten your day, and you’ll see motherhood in a whole new light."
—Amy Chua, Yale Law professor and author of Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother and Political Tribes: Group Instinct and the Fate of Nations

"Years ago, I learned that whenever Susan Lundy’s child-stuffed VW van braked to a halt in a swim-meet parking lot, joy would tumble out. This book, in which she charts everyday family life with a deft, self-deprecating wit, is about that joy."
—Jack Knox, award-winning journalist and bestselling author of the Leacock Medal-nominated Opportunity Knox: Twenty Years of Award-Losing Humour Writing

"Susan Lundy (no relation) has written a delightful and charming collection of stories about life on a small and, yes, strange, island (which I call home as well). Her warm, loving, and humorous accounts cumulatively unveil the extraordinary universal truths in the plain particulars of all our lives."
—Derek Lundy, bestselling author of Borderlands: Riding the Edge of America and The Bloody Red Hand: A Journey Through Truth, Myth, and Terror in Northern Ireland

"Susan Lundy takes us along with her on a rollercoaster ride through her life as a Salt Spring Islander, a wife, a mother, a journalist, and a keen observer on the foibles and challenges of living a contemporary west coast life. She writes with humour, honesty, and humanity. And hope. Her book is something we all need right now."
—Ian Haysom, bestselling author of Grandfathered: Dispatches from the Trenches of Modern Grandparenthood