The Spoon Stealer

Emmeline was born into a rural Nova Scotian farming family but never felt she belonged. After her family suffered heavy losses during the First World War, grief, toxicity, and mental illness weighed on them so heavily that she fled to England. Now retired and living in a small coastal town with her best friend Vera—a small white dog—Emmeline joins a memoir-writing course at the library to interact more with humans. Her classmates are charmed by her funny, loud personality and riveting memoir. As she shares her past, friendships form, filling a rather lonely life. She also reveals her third-biggest secret: she is a compulsive spoon stealer who has liberated hundreds of spoons over her lifetime, including from the local library, Cary Grant, and Winston Churchill. When Emmeline unexpectedly inherits the farm she grew up on, she must leave her new friends and return home. She arrives like a tornado, an off-kilter Mary Poppins bossing everyone around and getting things wrong, but also offering generosity and hard-earned wisdom. A pinball ricocheting between people, offending and inspiring in equal measure, Emmeline believes that kindness can help heal her family, broken by loss and secrecy.