Bones in the Backyard

During the war. ashortly after WWII, 

As a little girl, that's  a phrase I often heard my mother and her friends use. World War II broke out in 1939, the same year they graduated from high school. Most of the boys they knew sailed off to war. Many never returned.

Here on Canada's west coast, war seemed far away and there was excitement in the air. The women remembered dances at the elegant Crystal Gardens with big bands playing. Sailors arrived on leave and then were gone.

But there was something deeper, something more sinister that these women whispered about in the belief little ears couldn't hear. 

It puzzled me then. Later I  learned the truth.

Young women had a freedom their mothers never dreamed of and didn't understand. The numbers of unwed mothers rose sharply. Pregnant, unmarried girls were shipped off to "visit an aunt" which usually meant a home for unwed mothers where the nuns treated them like criminals. They were "fallen women."

Research led me to Nova Scotia and stories of Butterbox Babies. Years after the home was closed,  tiny skeletons were discovered buried in butterboxes on the grounds of the Ideal Home for Unwed Mothers, Adoptable babies were sold. Unadoptable babies disappeared.

Bones in the Backyard  tells the story of a dysfunctional Mother/Daughter relationship that alters drastically when Laura's elderly mother needs her help—whether either of them like it or not.

It takes Laura  on a quest to find a sister she never knew existed and bring her home while their terminally ill mother is still alive.

Bones in the Backyard will be released later this year.