BEYOND THE PALE : A Mother's Journey Towards Understanding her Child's Difference

Part Ian Brown's Boy in the Moon, Beyond the Pale will appeal to the broad readership of Kelle Hampton's Bloom and Andrew Solomon's Far From The Tree.

The story begins on St. Stephen's Day, 2010, in St. John's, Newfoundland when the author gives birth to a baby girl named Sadie Jane who has a shock of snow white hair. The maternity floor janitor, however, feels something is amiss, and, after three months of medical testing Sadie is diagnosed with albinism, a rare genetic condition where pigment fails to form in the skin, hair and eyes. She faces a lifetime indoors and is visually impaired. She will always have the otherworldly appearance that drew the awed hospital staff to her side. While simultaneously navigating new territory as a first-time parent of a child with a disability, Emily embarks on a three-year journey across North America and through parts of Eastern Africa to discover how we explain human differences, not through scientific facts or statistics, but through a system of cultural beliefs. Part parenting memoir, part cultural critique, and part travelogue, Beyond the Pale, as the title suggests, takes the reader into dark and unknown territory in the search for enlightenment. EMILY URQUHART is a folklorist and writer. She grew up in a small town in southwestern Ontario. She spent six years in St. John's, Newfoundland while working on an MA and PhD in folklore, as well as teaching undergraduate courses, at Memorial University. Her writing has appeared in Azure, Chatelaine and The Globe and Mail, and online at rabble.ca and cbc.ca, as well as in the anthology, The First Man in My Life: Daughters Write About Their Fathers. She recently relocated to Victoria, BC with her husband and their young daughter.