Grieving and suddenly alone in the world after the loss of her parents, Caitlin Maharg leaves Canada for the seashore of Northern Ireland on a whim to study with a well-known poet. As her feelings for him deepen, the complications of his life and the haunting of her grief threaten their future. It is time travel in two ways: as both a view into Northern Ireland in the 1990s and written with Caitlin’s family history criss-crossing the story, The Most Cunning Heart is subtle and poignant with beautifully drawn characters, a novel about adultery, family, grief, creativity, and how a quiet heroine learns to liberate herself.

Catherine Graham is a poet, novelist and creative writing instructor. She is the author of six acclaimed poetry collections, including The Celery Forest, a CBC Best Book of the Year and finalist for the Fred Cogswell Award for Excellence in Poetry. Her Red Hair Rises with the Wings of Insects was a finalist for the Raymond Souster Award and CAA Poetry Award and her debut novel, Quarry, was a finalist for the Sarton Women’s Book Award for Contemporary Fiction and Fred Kerner Book Award and won the Miramichi Reader’s “The Very Best!” Book Award and an Independent Publisher Book Awards’ gold medal for Fiction. She holds an MA in creative writing from Lancaster University (UK). Her poems have been translated into Greek, Serbo-Croatian, Bangla, Chinese and Spanish and have appeared in The Malahat Review, Arc Poetry Magazine, Glasgow Review of Books, Exile Quarterly, The Fiddlehead, Poetry Daily, Poetry Ireland, Gutter Magazine and have been broadcast on BBC Radio Ulster, anthologized in The White Page / An Bhileag Bhan: Twentieth Century Irish Women Poets and The Field Day Anthology of Irish Writing, Vol IV & V. A finalist for the Montreal International Poetry Prize, she has won the Arc Award of Awesomeness and her poems have been nominated for the 2020 National Magazine Award by Exile Magazine. She teaches creative writing at the University of Toronto where she won an Excellence in Teaching Award. A previous winner of the Toronto International Festival of Authors’ Poetry NOW, she leads their monthly book club and is also an interviewer for By the Lake Book Club.

Catherine Graham's profile page

Sometimes a quest begins in loss and grief. In Catherine Graham’s The Most Cunning Heart, a woman searches for inner freedom by understanding her mother’s story and learning to defy abusive forces. She rediscovers the lost mother who taught her that the tripod begins with a firm base, and fights to recognize the “quarried heart.” A warm, beautifully written tale of self-discovery.

Kim Echlin, author of Speak, Silence