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Discovered
35 years after the author's death in 1971, these fictional
tales of Nova Scotia life in the early 1900s are truly an
insight into a world of beauty, hardship, determination,
humor and compassion. They might well have died along with
the real characters, but fortunately the stories were
recently resurrected from their moldy storage boxes and
brought to life in print.
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So
beautifully written, the chapters in "Nova Scotia Memories"
introduce characters such as Gammy, the ancient
matriarch who struggles to keep her shattered family
together; Jim P, the quack doctor who preaches the
efficacy of pioneer and Indian remedies until he faces the
1918 Spanish Influenza epidemic; Old Screech, the
mail driver who is a devout believer in ghosts;
Gussie, the crippled girl ignored by boys, who dreams
of marrying and becoming a mother;
Danny Fiddler, the hunchback born with music in his
fingers; Peter Keeper, the backwoods sheep tender who
runs away to escape military conscription into World War I;
and several more.
The
plots are fictional but the characters, though renamed and
sometimes of composite personalities, are real.
The
author, E. E. "Kirk" Nichols, was born in Aspen, Nova
Scotia, in 1900 and is buried there. Though he spent his
adult life in the United States, Nova Scotia was always
"home." He wrote these stories in the early 1940s while
living in California, not knowing if they would ever be
enjoyed by others. Today they offer a precious bit of Nova
Scotia history and life along the St. Mary's River between
Sherbrooke and Antigonish 100 years ago.
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