On Thursday, July 17, the 20th launch of Gwen Lamont’s memoir takes place at Meaford Hall at 7 p.m. Tickets are available at gwenlamontauthor.ca.
For over thirty years, the memories of Lamont’s childhood were buried beneath a protective gauze of forgetting. Her 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.
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.”
Some of the themes in Lamont’s book have generated important community conversations. The author wants her book to inspire others to tell their stories, remind people of the power of a caring adult to change the trajectory of a child’s life, and to amplify the growing conversation about intimate partner violence.
In each community, representatives of council, women’s shelters, youth support organizations, police, and independent bookstores are invited as guests. The author has donated to 31 community organizations providing support to women, youth, and families.
Nineteen book launches across Ontario, attended by 950+ people, have taken place in the last year. There were two sold-out book launches at Coffin Ridge Winery and stops in Goderich, Parry Sound, Kincardine, Lion’s Head, Southampton, Hanover, Collingwood, Stratford, London (2), Colpoy’s Bay, Markdale, Owen Sound, Ottawa, Arnprior, St. Mary’s, and Peterborough.
The View from Coffin Ridge: A Childhood Exhumed is available for purchase in person or online at Ginger Press Books www.gingerpress.com, at Coffin Ridge Winery www.coffinridge.ca, and at 18 independent book stores listed at gwenlamontauthor.ca including Meaford’s newest bookstore The Book Hive.
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 longlisted from 2,300 submissions to the CBC Creative Non-Fiction Prize for Survivor’s Guilt, which explores themes from her book.
