Don’t Tell: Family Secrets

Donna McCart Sharkey and Arleen Paré, sisters and writers, have co-edited an anthology Don’t Tell: Family Secrets, about what may be hidden in families. For each individual, even in the same family, what is secret and what is not, may be different. In Don’t Tell: Family Secrets, fifty-nine writers tell their stories in either prose or poetry, of their own family secrets. So often, mothers bear the burden, stand over time as the keepers of these secrets, trying to keep families intact. Spanning continents, cultures, wars, belief systems, and the private lives of families, the secrets in this book range from over one hundred years ago to the present and include stories – some serious, others quirky, some resolved, and still others that remain a mystery.

Donna McCart Sharkey grew up in Montreal and now lives in Ottawa. Her most recent books are Falling Together: A Family’s Memoir of Mental Illness and Grief and Always With Me: Parents Talk About the Death of a Child. She is a former professor at the State University of New York and her research has been published in numerous academic journals. Arleen Paré is a Victoria writer with nine collections of poetry, including a recent chapbook. She has been short-listed for the BC Dorothy Livesay BC Award for Poetry and has won the American Golden Crown Award for Poetry, the Victoria Butler Book Prize, a CBC Bookie Award, and a Governor Generals’ Award for Poetry.

Introduction Donna McCart Sharkey Movies: The Secret Sin Ralph Friesen Man with Cucumbers Myrna Kostash The Front Door Jane Munro What You Didn’t Tell Elizabeth Templeman My Mother’s Madness JoAnn McCaig We Had One, Too Maureen Hynes The Lost Epistles of Margie John Barton Understanding My Face Michelle Brown Grief Frances Rooney Paired Secrets Ann Davis May Her Memory Nancy Issenman Roses Jessie Carson We Should Talk About This Later Sharon Cook I Should Have Known (A Found Correspondence) Blaine Marchand Frozen Air Linda Briskin Sabbath Wendy Donowa Drawing Out Shadows Caroline Purchase Umbilical Noose David Pimm Fireflies Soriya Turner Just a Story Debby Yaffe Mysterious Death on the Family Homestead Renee Duddridge Spectral Stories Lenore Maybaum Uncle Fred’s Secret Ruby Swanson The Road Leads to Crosby Beach Amanda Hale Pistal Packing Momma Phyllis Schull Cover Story Betsy Warland Twelve Red Letters Jean Crozier I found a Picture of my Great Aunt Heather Ramsay Bingo and Black Ice George Ilsley Shattered Helen Gowans In the Adaptation Judy LeBlanc Would you Trade This Family? Kae Solomon Stiff Upper Lip Kate Eckland Secrets Breed Questions Carole Harmon The Boyfriend Liana Cusmano A Real Doozie Pat Buckna The Real Truth Susan Braley The Doll Laurel M. Ross Fractal Adrienne Gruber The Ribbon Tree Shelley A. Leedahl Life Examined Through Frames Joan Conway My Three Fathers Pat Preston What’s New, Wild Child? Joy Thierry Lewellyn Deda Claire Sicherman Little Bird Cornelia Hoogland A True Story Anonymous Family Still Life Kathleen Vance Insomnia Chris Smart If it Weren’t for You Kids Leslie Silverman A Risk Worth Concealing Christine K. Anzur The State of Our Father Ingrid Rose Family Secrets Susan Scruton Eulogy Jim Nason Shame Barbara Barry Knothole Laura Sproule Bottle Dump Yaana Dancer Went West Cynthia Woodman Kirkham Kingdom Hall Leesa Hanna The Curse of Sin City Sarah Williams