For over 30 years, the memories of Gwen Lamont’s childhood were buried beneath a protective gauze of forgetting. Her recently released memoir, The View From Coffin Ridge: A Childhood Exhumed, is a remarkable story about what happens when we are forced to reconcile with a long forgotten past and the characters who shaped it.
No one knew of her poor, chaotic family. No one knew she had been a child bride, or of her close brush with death at the hands of a man who claimed to love her. She had promised never to tell. As the years went by, the weight of her past became too much for her to bear and she began to write her young self home.
Canadian author and activist Maude Barlow describes Lamont’s story as, “One courageous woman’s memoir of overcoming violence and trauma that looks straight into the heart of darkness to find the light.”
Plum Johnson, best-selling author of They Left Us Everything, said of the book, “This remarkable coming of age story is a Canadian Glass Castle.”
Former Senior Communications Advisor to the Prime Minister, Michael Den Tandt, reviewed the book and said, “It’s an extraordinary story, shocking and painful, written in unflinching, diamond-hard prose.”
Seven book launches have taken place since May 31; there were two sold out book launches at Coffin Ridge Winery, and five locations were part of the Summer Book Launch Series: Goderich, Parry Sound, Kincardine, Lion’s Head, and Southampton.
The fall tour kicked off in Hanover. The second stop is Collingwood at the Black Bellows Brewing Company on Thursday, October 3, from 5-7 p.m. Tickets are available at gwenlamontauthor.ca. Other launch locations this fall are Toronto, Stratford, and London.
The View from Coffin Ridge: A Childhood Exhumed is available for purchase in person or online at Ginger Press Books www.gingerpress.com and Coffin Ridge Winery www.coffinridge.ca
Lamont, who didn’t finish Grade 9, now holds a BA in Sociology, a BSW and MSW and a Master of Fine Arts. Her thesis, The Subjective Experience of Men Who Murder Their Intimate Partners, took her into prisons and into the minds of men who murder. In 2023 she was one of 30 writers long-listed from 2,300 submissions to the CBC Creative Non-Fiction Prize for Survivor’s Guilt, which explores themes from her book.
Author website: https://www.gwenlamontauthor.ca/
