Home of Author Kathy-Diane Leveille
PRAISE for LET THE SHADOWS FALL BEHIND YOU:
Paperback Edition
“It's often said, but usually not with such eloquence, that the only one you can't outrun is you. Kathy-Diane Leveille writes with passion and assurance of a woman who risks sacrificing far too much to try to erase the things she knows are true." -Jacquelyn Mitchard, author of The Deep End of the Ocean
"A taut psychological thriller with more than enough mystery and rich characterization to keep us mesmerized...." -Reader's Respite
"It's the quality of the writing that makes the read worthwhile...a very promising debut." -Reviewing the Evidence
"LET THE SHADOWS FALL BEHIND YOU is a haunting story of disappearance and loss and, ultimately, of redemption. Weaving together a world of family loyalties and family lies, of broken bonds and of those that endure, it combines the nuance of poetry with all the suspense of a thriller." Nino Ricci Author of The Origin of Species
This book is kind of a "Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants" for grownups. Four friends who bond together in childhood, each coming from a troubled past, they create a group for themselves--only does one of the women go above and beyond to take care of the others--even murder? ...this book kept me coming back for more. -Night Owl Romance
Hardcover edition (Kunati Books 2009)
LET THE SHADOWS FALL BEHIND YOU may by Kathy-Diane Leveille's first novel, but if this book is any indication of her gboth as a weaver of fascinating stories and a poet of natural expression then it will most assuredly not be her last! ....a fine debut. -Grady Harp, Top 10 Amazon Reviewer
"A murder, a past still preying upon the souls of those involved, is always an unwelcome and intrusive guest. LET THE SHADOWS FALL BEHIND YOU tells that chronicle with poignancy, wistful descriptions of small town life and punchy characterizations that expose hard truths. Sadly rich and beautiful writing."-Don Graves CANADIAN MYSTERIES The Hamilton Spectator.
Leveille is brilliant when it comes to building suspense. She drops little bombs, then waits several pages to spell it all out, which had me burning through the pages like crazy to find out what happens. -Diary of an Eccentric
Leveille has written a compelling debut novel...How each character responds to what has happened in the past, and how that shapes their life as an adult is part of the draw of this intense character study. ... the story moves at a rapid pace and does not disappoint. -Bella On-Line: The Voice of Women
IF SOMEBODY YOU LOVE DISAPPEARED...HOW FAR WOULD YOU GO TO FORGET?
When Brannagh’s boyfriend, Nikki, disappears on a bird count up north, she returns to the east coast for a reunion of the childhood all-girls club Tuatha-de-Dananns. Brannagh stays at her Grandmother’s cottage by the woods where her mother was murdered many years ago. As Brannagh struggles to solve the mystery of Nikki’s vanishing, she uncovers the secrets behind the most startling disappearance of all.
This enigmatic novel is about connections and relationships, memory and reality. It blend beautiful writing about nature and sharp, probing characterization and psychological observation.
PURCHASE KATHY-DIANE'S BOOKS:
AMAZON U.S.
AMAZON CANADA
AMAZON UK
BARNES and NOBLE
W. H. SMITH
WATERSTONES
Dive into these stories, let their current take you. Her settings and characters—their hopes and fears, verbal and behavioural ticks, even their smells—are keenly observed and full of sensual presence. The Globe and Mail All of us can see ourselves in these characters. These are stories that speak to the complicated bonds we have with siblings and parents, who they were and who they are now and how we learn the truth of what we took for granted before. The Daily Gleaner Picturing ordinary people in extraordinary situations, and recording their impressions with an intense clarity we associate more with black and white photos, Leveille is blessed with a flash of insight that lets the readers see far beyond the surface. The Chronicle Journal Roads Unravelling is a winding highway of quiet, still surfaces and yawning depths. Patrolling the flow are gape-jawed monsters and small glimmering pearls of real beauty. The Don’t start reading Leveille’s book at breakfast, if you want to get to work on time! Voyage North CBC Roads Unravelling sends the reader off the beaten path and down an honest dirt-road trek to some very worthwhile destinations. Kathy-Diane Leveille portrays her travelling companions with clarity and insight. Her fiction is absorbing: her command of dialogue and story development is assured. Roads Unravelling is a great piece of Canadian literature. Lesley Choyce author of Clear Cold Morning
ROADS UNRAVELLING: SHORT STORIES
With deft humour and unflinching honesty, Kathy-Diane Leveille unveils life's absurdities, the painful mistakes we all make and manage to survive. Rooted in working class experience, each story in Roads Unravelling traces the arc of a woman's awakening and her struggle to navigate new and unfamiliar territory. Though Leveille's characters are full of human frailties, they are willing to travel down necessary roads, no matter how unexpected the twists and turns. Leveille has a gift for striking imagery, an ear for dialect and an unsettling way of making the most prosaic choices seem foolhardy and the most outlandish seem reasonable.
AN EXCERPT FROM LET THE SHADOWS FALL BEHIND YOU:
Brannagh Maloney had lived with disappearances all her life. They were as familiar to her as the changing of the Fundy tides.
People who disappeared left cast-off shadows of themselves; murky tremblings that slunk out of corners on drizzly autumn afternoons. They lurked offstage, silent or sighing or reaching out to run a finger across her arm. They were the curtains fluttering in the window on a breezeless morning, the musty scent that arose when opening an abandoned cellar door.
When Brannagh was three-years-old, her father, Ben, a shy man, not given to volunteering his thoughts, hopped a Russian freighter.
“When will you return to the mainland?” Pamela, Brannagh’s mother, had asked as she squinted into a hand-held compact.
He had shrugged his broad shoulders, and laid one hand on Brannagh’s head. “Depends.”
Brannagh remembered the stillness that surrounded her mother when he did not return; the way that sunlight springing from behind a parted curtain made her flinch. Eighteen months later, at eight-thirty on a Wednesday morning, Brannagh’s mother packed a weather-beaten portmanteau and slipped out the door without a glimpse back. When Brannagh began to have nightmares, Aunt Thelma would bundle her up in a quilt and recite an invented winsome fairytale featuring Brannagh’s mother and father. She never tired of hearing the happy ending, even after her mother’s murder.
Brannagh’s childhood home had been a four-story dwelling on Argyle, on the west side of Saint John, New Brunswick, two blocks south of the Provincial Asylum where her Grandfather saw patients two days a week. Long before half-way houses and support systems became part of the neighbourhood, her Grandfather had run what was known as ‘The Nervous Clinic’ in their home. Selected patients, too healthy for the asylum, but too sick for families to cope with, were released into his custody for respite care. They settled on the third floor, where he kept an office, studied, and slept. He made fleeting appearances downstairs, ensuring Gran’s comfort while treating Brannagh’s mother and Aunt Thelma more like hired help than family.
Brannagh had been relieved to escape to university ten years ago. With each mile on the train drawing her further and further away, personal scenarios had shifted, and edges had blurred sending secrets scuttling into corners. By the time classes started at the
Kunati Books 2009.
