Born in Montana in 1910, Tessie Gillis in the 1950s came with her husband Joe to Rear Glencoe in Inverness County to live the hard, satisfying life of rural Cape Breton, Nova Scotia. Illness finally gave her the opportunity to write, and her friend and editor Evelyn Garbary helped her bloom into one of Cape Breton's finest writers. Daring to write about the darker elements of rural life, Tessie Gillis has emerged as the Godmother of Cape Breton Fiction. She died in 1972.