A Fit Month for Dying is M.T. Dohaney's third book about the women of Newfoundland's outports. Fans of her highly praised books The Corrigan Women and To Scatter Stones will embrace this new book, while those reading the author for the first time will discover her characteristic bittersweet humour.
Tess Corrigan seems to be living the good life. She is a popular politician, the first woman to serve as a Member of the House of Assembly. Her husband Greg is a successful lawyer and son Brendan is a seemingly happy hockey-mad twelve-year-old. Originally from the village of The Cove, the family is now comfortably ensconced in Newfoundland's capital city of St. John's.
Urged on by Greg's mother Philomena, Tess sets out to unravel her convoluted family tree. She searches out her natural father who is living in a retirement community, or as he calls it a "raisin farm," in Arizona. Ed Strominski was an American serving at the Argentia Naval Base when he married Tess's mother Carmel. Charming and outgoing, his one flaw was neglecting to reveal the small detail that he already had a wife. The stigma of growing up as the daughter of the abandoned "poor Carmel" has shaped Tess's life.
Involved with her own family problems and with her political work, Tess has no inkling of trouble when Brendan begs her to let him quit the Altar Servers' Association at their St. John's church. Always forthright, Tess insists that he fulfill his responsibilities to the organization. Her decision sets into motion a series of betrayals, revelations and realizations that change forever her family and the village of The Cove.
About the Author
M.T. (Jean) Dohaney was born in the small village of Point Verde, Placentia Bay, Newfoundland. In 1954 she moved to Fredericton. She completed her BA in English at the University of New Brunswick and her Masters and Doctorate in literature at the University of Maine and Boston University respectively. In 1988 she released her first book, The Corrigan Women. She followed this with When Things Get Back to Normal, a journal kept for the first year after her husband's sudden death in 1986. In 1996 she won the Thomas Head Raddall Atlantic Fiction Prize for A Marriage of Masks. Recently her filmscript Come Back, Paddy Reilly was chosen by the Atlantic Film Festival/CBC Writer's Project to be workshopped as a potential full-length feature film.
