• Age: 12 to 15
• Grade: 5

Seventeen-year-old Elizabeth Evans is the privileged and naive only child of prominent New Englanders, part of a group of Planters who settled in Nova Scotia following the deportation of the Acadian people. As a teenager, she is leading a carefree life in the Annapolis Valley, tending to her cows on the family farm, daydreaming by the brook, and resisting her mother's attempts to refine her manners and marry her off. She thinks nothing will ever change. But a stranger's arrival at Evans Hall, and a chance meeting with a mysterious Acadian girl in the woods nearby turn Elizabeth's carefree life upside down. And when she learns the truth about the history of the farm she loves so well, she knows nothing will ever be the same.

“Joanne K. Jefferson was born and raised in Halifax and now makes her home in West LaHave, Nova Scotia. Her poetry, short fiction, and non-fiction writing appear in a variety of Canadian publications. She leads writing workshops for young people at the Tatamagouche Centre and in schools around Nova Scotia.

Joanne Jefferson's profile page

Lightning and Blackberries

The rolling hills and marshlands of late eighteenth-century Nova Scotia hide a darker past that unfolds slowly in the pages of Joanne Jefferson’s engaging Lightning and Blackberries. The first of her protagonists, 17-year-old Elizabeth Evans, writes an account of the year in which her world, after her encounter with a young Acadian woman, was forever changed. Through Elizabeth, Jefferson skillfully sets out the difficulties facing those in society who do not want to accept the role that has been set for them. The second protagonist is the Acadian woman herself, Marie-Madeleine. Her voice allows Jefferson to highlight a very painful chapter in Canadian history, that of the Great Expulsion of the Acadians, which saw the Acadians forced from their lands by the English.

Jefferson successfully interweaves the two stories, though Elizabeth’s voice is the stronger of the two. As Marie-Madeleine and Elizabeth slowly overcome the barriers between them they are able to see beyond the wrongs of the past and begin to redress them, on however small a scale. Their encounter allows each to recognize what is most important to them and ask that they be allowed to achieve it.

Jefferson, in her well-constructed plot, has created convincing characters and a strong sense of place (both physical and historical). She has both deftly captured Nova Scotia’s pioneer society and sympathetically addressed the expulsion of the Acadians, making Lightning and Blackberries a welcome addition to young adult Canadian historical fiction.