Ll Secrets Told

All Secrets Told

Kate was born to a mother who had already shown signs of an abusive and cruel nature. Her grandmother unsuccessfully tried to keep her eldest granddaughter safe but when the new family emigrated to the other side of the world, young Kates fate was sealed. As the eldest of a large family she knew it was her job to defend and protect her siblings, be the household slave and try to make her mother happy and her father notice her once in a while. Kates job ended when she was forced to marry a man she feared. Her siblings never forgave her for abandoning them; leaving them in the hands of a woman whose rages never ceased. . The die was cast for a life of abuse, fear and depression. The life of Cinderella the doormat. The one thing that kept Kates indomitable spirit alive and safe was hope and a tiny sliver of self-respect that said she didnt deserve the life that she was living, even though she believed she had no choices. Kates survival strategy was to comply with their mothers demands and do all that was demanded of her, while expecting nothing of herself. After many years the strategy failed and Kate found herself down a rabbit hole of insanity. Her journey to free herself from depression and gain awareness had begun A journey to finally put her past to rest and to discover who she is . Kate is soon to realize what courage really means when evil returns to terrorize her. She discovers that she has little time or energy for the one thing that she had previously given herself so freely to..fear ; so when physical pain threatens her very life, she rediscovers that her spirituality is, as always there to protect, heal and give her the strength to survive once again. Most of all Kate knows that the best that life has to offer can never be destroyed, no matter how hot the flames. This is a heroic journey of a woman who is betrayed, abused and abandoned; who meets the true tests of courage and self-belief and who finally reaches enlightenment to discover what love truly is.

I'll Tell You a Secret

"Memory opens for me through my body. I slip back because I catch a smell, hear a sound, or hold an evocative flavour on my tongue. But these single-sense glimpses of or gusts from the past are often fleeting. More compelling for me, more total, is when my whole body, the entire surface of my skin, and my muscles' movements connect me to my old self. Especially it is the movements of summer, when more of me meets the elements, while I am swimming, or feeling my bramble-scratched legs against hot rocks. Or when I am experiencing the lovely lassitude that fills me at the end of a long afternoon of sun and water as I stand slicing tomatoes for my supper, while corn boils, and sun falls in the window on a pile of raspberries in a bowl. All my senses, all, are alive." fromI'll Tell You a Secret A delightful, beautifully written and thoroughly engaging story of coming-of-age in the 1950s that focuses on Anne Coleman between the ages of fourteen and twenty-one, and her relationship with "Mr. MacLennan" (Canadian literary figure Hugh MacLennan), which played out in the summers in the village of North Hatley, Quebec, a picturesque resort that has been known to attract artists and writers and the upper-classes. In prose that is intimate, visual, and resonant with immediacy, Anne Coleman brings us back to summers in the 1950s, revealing the eccentricities of North Hatley and its residents, but most of all focusing on her special friendship with a man many years her senior. Independent, individualistic, sensually alert, as a young girl Anne Coleman did not fit the mould. Later, when Anne is eighteen, she leads a double life, one which follows the course of a romance with Frank, the dark, brooding European young man who has a strange hold over her, and the enigmatic Mr. MacLennan, whose own feelings for Anne suggest themselves to her in ways that are at once confusing, tantalizing, and deeply important. Along the way, the story also offers a wonderfully evocative portrayal of the 1950s, its sexual repressiveness and mores. The beautiful village of North Hatley comes alive in vivid ways. This is a unique coming-of-age story by a writer who writes sentences that cut to the bone. From the Hardcover edition.

All the Year Round