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Vendor
Liepman Literary Agency
Marc Koralnik
Original language
English

THEY LEFT US EVERYTHING

Plum Lind Johnson

Winner of the RBC Charles Taylor Prize, shortlisted for the Stephen Leacock Award and the Kobo Emerging Author Award, Canadian bestseller. Anyone who has ever dealt with aging parents will relate to the demands, resentment, guilt, and, in the end, the dispersal of possessions—saying goodbye and letting go.
THEY LEFT US EVERYTHING is a funny, touching memoir about the importance of preserving family history to make sense of the past, and nurturing family bonds to safeguard the future.

After almost twenty years of caring for elderly parents – first for their senile father, and then for their cantankerous 93-year old mother – author Plum Johnson and her three younger brothers have finally fallen to their middle-aged knees with conflicted feelings of grief and relief. Now they must empty and sell the beloved family home. It hasn't been de-cluttered in over half a century. Twenty-three rooms bulge with history, antiques, and oxygen tanks. Her mother always said, “You'll have to shovel me out of here!” and Plum always thought: How hard will that be? I know how to buy garbage bags! But the task turns out to be much harder and more rewarding than she ever imagined. Items from childhood trigger difficult memories of her eccentric family growing up in a small town on the shores of Lake Ontario in the 1950s and 60s, but unearthing new facts about her parents helps her reconcile those relationships, with a more accepting perspective about who they were and what they valued.

PLUM LIND JOHNSON is an award-winning author and visual artist living in Toronto. She was the founder of KidsCanada Publishing corp., and publisher of KidsToronto; In 2002, she co-founded Help's Here! magazine. Periodically, her humorous columns about family life appear online at 50Plus.com.
Available products
Book

Published 2016-07-01 by Putnam

Comments

Gads Forlag

Brandon Cultur

"An unassuming memoir that hits you deep in the gut, leaving you bruised and thoughtful long after its last page."

" a poetic meditation on aging, grief and filial responsibility."

"At times heartbreaking and at others hysterically funny, Johnson's memories propel the narrative from volatile mid-century Singapore to a sprawling, colonial-era Virginia estate and beyond, but always settle back to the rambling family home on the shores of Lake Ontario; a place "seared into their bones." ...The book's descriptive prose brings these places and people to life and poignantly conveys the quasi-spiritual journey that helps Johnson overcome her grief."

Putnam (July 2016)