Books
Coming Summer 2026
Acadian Shorelines
Acadian Shorelines relays the hijinks and heartaches of teenager Tommy Breau growing up in the late 1960s in a small Acadian fishing village in Nova Scotia, where American radio broadcasts of pop music, world news, and baseball come in more clearly on his transistor radio than the Habs games from Montreal.
Hilarious and heart-breaking in equal measure and featuring a rich cast of smart but clueless friends, wished-for girlfriends, and a loving if strict family, Acadian Shorelines has the adult Tommy looking back and wondering whether the French, Catholic upbringing he was so eager to escape may have been the best years of his life.
As a child of the Sixties and of rural Acadian descent, this story is deeply personal to me and I believe I offer a unique cultural and historical perspective. Readers who enjoy energy, wit, and a touch of darkness will find Acadian Shorelines appealing, as will anyone who seeks temporary escape to simpler times. Or anyone who wants to drop in on a realistic, vivid setting they might previously have known nothing about.
Works in Progress
I am working on two more novels, which means I'll end up with a trilogy! More information to follow.
Sequel to Acadian Shorelines
Tommy Breau is now known as Tommy Bro, and even has his own radio show on the Annapolis U. campus. But he is not as cool as he thinks he is. In fact, he is quite homesick and out of his element. Luckily, he meets other young people who share his anxieties and dreams, and together they walk through the fog of war that is university.
But they also share flights of fancy. They think the Dean of Science is a spy who is having an affair with his secretary, that the Psychology professor is the paragon of “women’s lib” because she goes around braless, and that blood donation clinics are there to enable cheap drunks.
Some of which may actually be true; you’ll just have to wait until it comes out.
Prequel to Acadian Shorelines
Tommy is only thirteen years old when this story opens, wide-eyed and innocent, earning money mowing lawns and gathering Irish moss with his friends, who are equally clueless about life and happy to embark on shenanigans with him.
In this story, we find out how Tommy came up with a conformity-bending personal philosophy he calls “eating grass”—a quiet but telling contrast to the rigid certainties of his Catholic upbringing—one day during a Sunday sermon, where our hero was an altar boy trying to stay awake during the homily. Having sipped some communion wine in the sacristy before mass may have had something to do with it.
We also get to find out how his true love got to grow into a passion that far exceeded his capacity to understand what was going through him.
Set in the same tiny village of Glen River (“Grand Ruisseau” to the elders), we get to experience more of the characters and milieus we met in the first book.