Bones in the Backyard

During the war. 

That's a phrase I often heard growing up in the fifties. World War Two broke out in 1939, the same year my mother and her friends graduated from high school. The boys could hardly wait to  join the fighting. 

Many never returned, their names are on listed on a plaque near the entrance to Victoria High School in Victoria, BC. It is a very long list.

For the young women left behind, here on the west coast, war seemed far away. Their war memories were of dances at the elegant Crystal Gardens with big bands playing and sailors on leave to dance with. The young men came home, danced, and  were gone.

But there was something deeper, something more sinister that the women, now as young mothers, whispered about when they thought I couldn't hear. 

Words that puzzled me as a child. Much later I  learned the truth.

During the war, young women experienced a freedom their mothers never dreamed of and didn't understand. The numbers of unwed mothers rose sharply. Being pregnant and unmarried was considered disgraceful, it brought shame to a girl's family. So they were shipped off to "visit an aunt," which usually meant a home for unwed mothers where the nuns treated them like criminals. 

Research for this book led me to the east coast and the Ideal Home for Unwed Mothers in Nova Scotia where, years after the war ended,  tiny skeletons were found buried in butterboxes.  

They were the unadaptable babies. The perfect babies were sold for adoption. All were forgotten.

Except by their young mothers.

Bones in the Backyard  tells the story of a dysfunctional mother/daughter relationship that alters drastically when Laura's elderly mother is terminally ill and begins to divulge long buried secrets.

It takes Laura  on a quest to find a sister she never knew existed and bring her home before it's too late.

Bones in the Backyard will be released later this year.