A spaceship hurtles towards the moon, hippies gather at Woodstock, Charles Manson leads a cult into murder and a Kennedy drives off a Chappaquiddick dock: it’s the summer of 1969. And as mankind takes its giant leap, Jordan May March, disabled bastard and genius, age fourteen, limps and schemes her way towards adulthood. Trapped at the March family’s cottage, she spends her days memorizing Top 40 lists, avoiding her adoptive cousins, catching frogs and plottingto save Yogi, the bullied, buttertart-eating bear caged at the top of March Road. In her diary, reworking the scant facts of her adoption, Jordan visions and revisions a hundred different scenarios for her conception on that night in 1954 when Hurricane Hazel tore Toronto to shreds, imagining her conception at the Lakeshore Psychiatric Hospital or the CNE horse palace, and such parents as JFK, Louisa May Alcott, Perry Mason and the Queen of England.

But when bear-baiting cousin Derwood finds the diary and learns everything that the family will not face, the target of his torture shifts from Yogi the Bear to his disabled and haunted adopted cousin. As caged as Yogi, Jordan is drawn to desperate measures.

With its soundtrack of sixties pop songs, swamp creatures, motor boats and the rapid-fire punning of the family’s Marchspeak, When Fenelon Falls will take you to a time and place that was never as idyllic as it seemed, where not belonging turns the Summer of Love into a summer of loss.

'The meta-fictional aspect of the novel provides a generous extra layer of storytelling that is both funny and wise. The writing is strong and complex and the subject matter, unique, important and emotionally moving.'

– Lisa Moore, author of February

'The story is full of humour, surprises and a refreshingly unsentimental depiction of family relations. A boldand challenging undercurrent of darkness drives the plot forward … Palmer is a talented writer with an original voice and a marvellous ear for the nuance (and fun) of language.'

– Quill and Quire

Dorothy Ellen Palmer is a mom, binge knitter, disabled senior writer, accessibility consultant and retired high school drama teacher and union activist. She grew up in Alderwood, Toronto, and spent childhood summers at a three-generation cottage near Fenelon Falls.

For three decades, she worked in three provinces as a high school English/Drama teacher, teaching on a Mennonite Colony, a four-room schoolhouse, an adult learning centre attached to a prison and a highly diverse new high school in Pickering. Elected to her union executive in multiple capacities, she served as Branch President and Picket Captain. While coaching for the Canadian Improv Games, she created and toured staff and student improv workshops to fight bullying, racism, sexism, sexual harassment and homophobia.

Dorothy sits on the Accessibility Advisory Committee of the Festival of Literary Diversity (FOLD) and is an executive member of Canadian Creative Writers and Writing Programs (CCWWP) where she writes a monthly column on disability for the newsletter.

Her work has appeared in: Nothing Without Us, REFUSE, Wordgathering, Alt-Minds, All Lit Up, Don’t Talk to Me About Love, Little Fiction Big Truths, 49th Shelf and Open Book. Her first novel, When Fenelon Falls (Coach House, 2010), features a disabled teen protagonist in the Woodstock-Moonwalk summer of 1969. She lives in Burlington, Ontario, and can always be found tweeting @depalm.

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