For two traumatic days, Livvy Higgs is besieged by a series of small heart attacks while the ghost of her younger self leads her back through a past devastated by lies and secrets.

The story opens in Halifax in 2009, travels back to the French Shore of Newfoundland during the mid-thirties and the heyday of the Maritime shipping industry, makes its way to wartorn Halifax during the battle of the Atlantic in World War II, then leaps ahead to the bedside of the elder Livvy.

Caught between a troubled past, and her present and worsening living conditions, Livvy is forced to pick apart the lies and secrets told by her greedy, prideful father, Durwin Higgs, who judges her a failure, and her formidable Grandmother Creed, who has mysteriously aligned herself with Livvy's father, despite their mutual hatred.

Tending to Livvy during her illness is her young next-door neighbour, Gen, a single mother and social-work student. Overnight, a violent scene embroils the two in each other's lives in a manner that will entwine them forever. In The Deception of Livvy Higgs, the inimitable Morrissey has written a powerful tale, the Stone Angel of the East Coast.

Donna Morrissey was born in The Beaches, a small village on the northwest coast of Newfoundland that had neither roads nor electricity until the 1960s a place not unlike Haire’s Hollow, which she depicts in Kit’s Law. When she was sixteen, Morrissey left The Beaches and struck out across Canada, working odd jobs from bartending to cooking in oil rig camps to processing fish in fish plants. She went on to earn a degree in social work at Memorial University in St. Johns. It was not until she was in her late thirties that Morrissey began writing short stories, at the urging of a friend, a Jungian analyst, who insisted she was a writer. Eventually she adapted her first two stories into screenplays, which both went on to win the Atlantic Film Festival Award; one aired recently on CBC. Kit’s Law is Morrissey’s first novel, the winner of the Canadian Booksellers Association First-Time Author of the Year Award and shortlisted for many prizes, including the Atlantic Fiction Award and the Chapters/Books in Canada First Novel Award. Morrissey lives in Halifax, Nova Scotia.

Donna Morrissey's profile page

• Short-listed, The Lieutenant Governor of Nova Scotia Masterworks Art Award

“An aged, almost helpless woman recalls and thus returns to her young, helpless, innocent self. But what can she offer that child? As much hard truth as she can find, a gentle touch, and the rare gift of simply being seen, clearly.” –Bonnie Burnard, Giller Prize-winning author of A Good House

“This hauntingly beautiful novel lingers in the imagination like the sight of a storm-churned ocean, and confirms that Morrissey is one of Canada’s great storytellers.” –Vincent Lam

“Morrissey’s latest effort reaffirms her ability to give voice to female characters whose secrets keep us turning pages.” –Quill & Quire

"Haunting, emotionally insistent, lyrical and powerful in its portrait of two unforgettable women—Livvy and Gen—whose fates are entwined by a violent act, The Deception of Livvy Higgs is Donna Morrissey's best work yet. Her writing has what Chekhov called "indispensable layering of fact and feeling." Morrissey has brought the WWII era into the present with the disturbing intimacy of a seance. A rare accomplishment." –Howard Norman, author of What Is Left The Daughter

“Readers will gain from spending time with this moving story, by taking away the reminder that no one needs to suffer loneliness ‘when love was but a truth away.’” –The Globe and Mail

“Donna Morrissey is an absolute terrific original.” –David Adams Richards

“Irresistible… Masterful… The rich, rocky terrain of Newfoundland has borne a native storyteller with talent to burn in Donna Morrissey.” –Dublin Sunday Tribune

“Donna Morrissey is a wonderfully gifted writer. The setting of her books is Newfoundland, but their appeal is universal. She unashamedly cares for her characters and sees them as real people with real lives worth caring and reading about. To read one of her books is to wind up laughing or crying or somehow doing both at once.” –Wayne Johnston

“Everything is hyper-vivid in Morrissey’s world, not excluding emotions, dreams and unresolved conflicts… Morrissey reveals the beauty and the terror of two economic realities, worlds apart from us and from each other.” –Toronto Star

Beautiful

by Loni C.

The Deception of Livvy Higgs was simply fantastic. It might be the best book I've read so far this year*. Donna Morrissey's prose was haunting and lyrical. I didn't know that a story about an old lady could have me so captivated. I was lucky to win it from Penguin Canada. The characters are what really make this story, but if you're interested in Newfoundland and Nova Scotia during World War II, this is a great book to read. I really enjoyed the "franglais" of the Newfoundlanders. I wonder, is this what happens when someone is fully bilingual? Is this common of people on the East Coast? Was Halifax really like that when the war ended? The novel, especially the end, had me wondering about Canadian history.

I might have been a little in love with Henri. He's such a rogue, but he's honest and he loves Livvy. I also enjoyed the contrast of the present (2009) with the story set in the past. Gen's problems seem real and modern, as if this single mother could possibly be in your social work classes. I love how she defends her brother from an old lady's preconceptions. It seems that Livvy had been so angry for so long, finally at the end, I think she is letting it go.

Minor Spoilers

There are a lot of "deceptions" in this story. There are Livvy's father's and mother's, her grandmothers' lies upon lies, her beloved Missus Louis, even Henri. Eventually she learns all their truths. She was hardened as a child, by the death of her mother and by her father's perceptions of her. I think in the beginning, Durwin Higgs wanted his daughter to love him, but he was too prejudiced against the people and things she cared about. To me, that's so sad, but what else could be expected from a man that married a woman for the most awful of reasons.

With all the deceptions that surrounded her, what was Livvy's? The way Grandmother Creed died? She lived in her house, with all the people who knew her and her Grandmother thinking bad things. The older residents passed the story down to the young ones. I wonder why she stayed in Halifax. Why not move to a town where no one knew who you were? I understand not going back to Newfoundland. Did she stay because of Henri's job? There are other coastal towns and cities, couldn't they find a new one? (Though I love that Livvy rocked babies, volunteering in the nursery.) Though there we secrets, I think in the end, LIvvy had a good life. In the end, this was an excellent book.