Ten Books to Read Set in Nova Scotia
Paris. New York City. London. Toronto.
There’s no shortage of novels set in and around these metropolitan cities. In fact, we’ve probably read a few of them over the years.
But there are actually a whole array of novels with deep connections to Nova Scotia, that prove to be just as captivating reads.
Here are ten books set in Nova Scotia:
THE BERRY PICKERS by Amanda Peters
Amanda Peters’s heart-wrenching debut novel foregrounds the rippling effects of trauma and separation that stem from the disappearance of a young child.
In 1962 a young Mi’kmaq girl from Nova Scotia mysteriously vanishes, an occurrence that leads to a decades-long search for truth and resolution.
Contemplating loss, grief, and the resilience of love, this novel has been praised for examining Indigenous family separation and the attempted erasure of the Mi’kmaq people.
Amanda Peters is a writer of Mi’kmaq and settler ancestry who teaches in the Department of English and Theatre at Acadia University. The Berry Pickers is her first novel — a national bestseller and the winner of the Dartmouth Book Award for fiction.
HOLD MY GIRL by Charlene Carr
Charlene Carr’s novel examines the complexity of motherhood through two women whose eggs are switched during IVF. After one baby is stillborn and the error is discovered, a grueling custody battle takes place to decide who bears claim to the surviving child.
Carr grew up in Toronto before moving to New Brunswick and eventually settling in Nova Scotia. Her other novels include Hold My Girl and We Rip the World Apart.
Hold My Girl is one of CBC Books’s Best of Canadian Fiction and a finalist for the Thomas Raddall Atlantic Fiction Award.
ROAR by Shelley Thompson
Shelley Thompson’s debut novel follows a young trans woman as she returns to the family farm following her mother’s death.
Having transitioned in secret as her mother received cancer treatment, Dawn negotiates grief, complicated reactions from her family, and enduring love as she arrives in rural Nova Scotia for the funeral.
Thompson is an actor and screenwriter, as well as the mother of a trans child and an activist for the trans community. Roar was inspired by Thompson’s award-winning feature film, Dawn, Her Dad & the Tractor.
THE BIRTH HOUSE by Ami McKay
The Birth House is the story of Dora Rare, the first daughter born in five generations, as she comes of age in an isolated Nova Scotia fishing village.
After she becomes the apprentice of a local midwife, Dora goes on to play a defining role in the births, unwanted pregnancies, and complex labours of local women as she grapples with the arrival of a domineering male doctor who aims to suppress a woman’s rights to control her own body.
The debut novel of Ami McKay, The Birth House is a national bestseller and the winner of three CBA Libris Awards. She is also the author of The Witches of New York and The Virgin Cure.
THE BOOK OF NEGROES by Lawrence Hill
This sweeping novel follows a young West African girl as she is abducted into slavery and transported to the southern United States before finding her way to freedom — a journey that takes her through the docks of Halifax and the manor houses of London.
A widely acclaimed novel, The Book of Negroes is a winner of the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize and CBC Radio’s Canada Reads. It has also been adapted into an award-winning miniseries.
Lawrence Hill is a Canadian novelist, essayist, and memoirist. The author of ten books of fiction and non-fiction, Hill was also selected in 2013 to deliver the Massey Lectures.
BAROMETER RISING by Hugh MacLennan
Set against the backdrop of the catastrophic Halifax Explosion, MacLennan’s first novel is a gripping romance set in 1917.
A young woman believes her lover has died in disgrace while serving in World War I, unaware he has returned home to clear his name. Yet the Halifax Explosion is on the verge of throwing both of their lives into unexpected chaos.
Hugh MacLennan is a Nova Scotian author who won five Governor General’s Awards and a Royal Bank Award. Although his first novels focused on international issues, Barometer Rising turns inward and foregrounds Canadian life and concerns — a shift that led MacLennan to great success.
TWENTY-SIX by Leo McKay Jr.
In a rustic Nova Scotia town, a terrible mining accident alters the course of one family’s life forever.
Using a non-chronological form, Twenty-Six introduces the various members of the Burrows family as they are forced to grapple with the impact of the explosion and confront one another.
Leo McKay Jr. is a high school teacher in Truro, Nova Scotia and the former editor of PRISM international. After becoming a finalist for his debut collection of stories, Like This, McKay turned toward writing a novel. The result is Twenty-Six, which became a national bestseller.
THE MOUNTAIN AND THE VALLEY by Ernest Buckler
First published back in 1952, this hallmark of Canadian literature tells the story of one man in the decades leading up to World War II.
Before charting his idyllic childhood in the Annapolis Valley and later unraveling, the novel begins with the final hours of David Canaan’s death to explore failed dreams, downward spirals, and the potential for epiphany despite it all.
Ernest Buckler was one of Canada’s most prominent authors in the mid-twentieth century. Although he has somewhat fallen into obscurity, he published various novels and stories and is known, in Margaret Atwood’s words, as “one of the pathbreakers for the modern Canadian novel.”
NO GREAT MISCHIEF by Alistair MacLeod
Alistair MacLeod’s only novel begins in Toronto with one man visiting his elderly brother before transplanting the reader back to Cape Breton to explore their ancestral roots and familial legacies.
A tale that foregrounds the ties of brotherhood and the rippling effect that cascades through generations, No Great Mischief is a family elegy that mixes joy with sorrow, legends with danger, and always the present with the past.
MacLeod was raised in Cape Breton before becoming a Professor of English in Ontario where he taught creative writing for over thirty years. No Great Mischief is a crowd-pleasing favourite and was voted Atlantic Canada’s greatest book of all time.
FALL ON YOUR KNEES by Ann-Marie MacDonald
The winner of the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize for Best Book and an Oprah’s Book Club feature, Fall on Your Knees moves through Cape Breton to World War One and later New York City as it charts the lives of four sisters.
Another family saga, MacDonald’s novel, too, grapples with far-reaching familial bonds, destructive secrets, and racially-charged strife as it oscillates between the comical and the tragic.
Ann-Marie MacDonald is a Canadian novelist, playwright, actor, and broadcaster of Lebanese heritage. An advocate for the LGBTQ+ community, she now lives in Toronto. Fall on Your Knees is her first novel.
Lead Photo: Nathan Dumlao