A novel about what happens when we view our neighbours as "The Other" and the transformative power of unlikely friendships; Our Daily Bread is inspired by the true story of the Goler Clan of Nova Scotia.

The God-fearing people of Gideon shun the Erskine Clan, who have lived on North Mountain in poverty, secrecy and isolation, believing their neighbours to be beyond salvation. "That's the mountain," they say. "What do you expect from those people?"

Yet in both groups nearly everyone has secrets and nothing is as it seems.

On the mountain, Albert Erskine dreams of a better and safer life for his younger brothers and sisters. He lives by his code: "You keep your secrets to yourself and you keep your weaknesses a secret and your hurts a secret and your dreams you bury double deep."

In town, young Ivy Evans is relentlessly bullied by her classmates. Though her father, Tom, is a well-liked local, his troubled marriage to a restless outsider is a source of gossip. As rumors and innuendo about the Evans family spread, Ivy seeks refuge in Dorothy Carlisle, an independent-minded widow who runs a local antique store.

When Albert ventures down the mountain and seizes on the Evanses' family crisis as an opportunity to befriend Ivy's vulnerable teenage brother, Bobby, he sets in motion a chain of events that changes everything.

Lauren B. Davis is the author of Against A Darkening Sky; The Empty Room, named one of the Best Books of the Year by the National Post, the Winnipeg Free Press, Amazon and the Coast; and Our Daily Bread, longlisted for the Scotiabank Giller Prize and named one of the Best Books of the Year by the Globe & Mail and the Boston Globe. Her other books include the bestselling and critically acclaimed novels The Radiant City, a finalist for the Rogers Writers' Trust Fiction Prize, and The Stubborn Season, one of the Top Fifteen Bestselling First Novels by Amazon and Books in Canada, as well as two short story collections, An Unrehearsed Desire and Rat Medicine & Other Unlikely Curatives.

Her short fiction has been shortlisted for the CBC Literary Award and the ReLit Award, and she is the recipientof two Mid-Career Writer Sustaining grants from the Canada Council for the Arts. Lauren was born in Montreal and now lives in Princeton, New Jersey, with her Best Beloved, Ron, and Bailey, the extremely spoiled rescue pup.

Lauren B. Davis' profile page

Our Daily Bread

by LindaCrosfield

It's never easy reading a book that is rife with the squalor and abuse in which some people find themselves. I nearly didn't make it through the first chapter because of the above, but having said that, I'm glad I kept going. The characters in this very moving story are beautifully drawn. Dorothy, who runs the antique store, is Everygrandmother—ferocious when crossed but not without a sense of humour. And Albert, the protagonist is beyond memorable. The children, and there are many with varying parts to play in this story, are larger than life. Another reminder, as if we need one, that things are not always the way they seem on the surface, that everyone has a story, and everyone deserves a chance to better themselves because this is the way the world works, we are given chances and some of us take them and run and some of us ignore them and flounder. I highly recommend this gritty, beautifully written book. And I'll be reading more of Ms. Davis' work thanks to this introduction to her.