In celebration of the Keep Toronto Reading Festival, the library is pleased to host Susan Siddeley for a reading from her memoir, Home First: A Memoir in Voices.

From the Introductory and Cover Sheet:

“In Home First: A Memoir in Voices, Susan Siddeley traces her life; growing up in Yorkshire, falling in love with Foreign, emigrating to Canada and travelling to further-flung postings to which her husband’s job takes her and their family. In all these places, unexpected connecters crop up: lakes in Ontario, violins in Jamaica, boats in Bolivia and cowboys in Chile. With pinafores, picnics, blackberries, tea, sea, books and babies everywhere. She wonders then, if these are just co-incidences or because everyone’s existence is an amalgam of their ancestral landscapes and life experiences.

During a trip home to see her aging mother and tickled by a chance remark of her aunt, Susan seeks out the burial plot of her older sister, Pauline, unmentioned until then, who died the night she was born. After her mother’s death, remembering the revelation, Susan ventures into the local Registry Office and discovers a second shocking death, one which helps explain aspects of her early life.

Sitting under an ancient chestnut tree in a lovely old cemetery, talking and telling tales to a person she never knew with tongue-in-cheek humour, and a crossword craving to solve and explain things, Susan pieces together the forces at work beneath the lives of a family of women, spanning four generations and three continents.”

The reading will take place on Thursday, April 19 at 5:30 – 6:30 p.m. in LIB489B, with refreshments being served at 5:15 p.m. All are welcome!