The Secret of the Blue Trunk

Lise Dion author Liedewij Hawke translator

Format:Paperback

Publisher:Dundurn Group Ltd

Published:12th Apr '12

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The Secret of the Blue Trunk cover

2014 Forest of Reading, White Pine Award — Winner, Nonfiction

The true story of how a young Québécois nun ended up a prisoner of war in Buchenwald and how her daughter discovered her secrets.

In this true story, Armande Martel, a young nun from Quebec, is arrested by the Germans in 1940 during a stay at her religious order’s mother house in Brittany. She spends the war years in a German concentration camp. After her return to Canada, she leaves the Church, finds the love of her life in Montreal, and adopts Lise Dion.

Growing up, Lise is familiar with only a few facts of her mother’s past. It’s when she clears her mother’s small apartment after her death that Lise Dion discovers the key to the blue trunk, which was always locked. This key unlocks the mystery of Armande’s early life, and Lise decides to write The Secret of the Blue Trunk.

The secrets Dion unravelled are so extraordinary, Armande’s tale so poignant, it made me think about the Diary of Anne Frank. The Secret of the Blue Trunk is a stellar Canadian biography.

* Toronto Star *
…painfully frank and absorbing, and in the end, difficult to put down. * Globe and Mail *
...touching and commendable... * Quill & Quire *
It is a terrible and tragic story that Dion has written, told in stark and straightforward words. * Waterloo Record *
It is pure, fast-paced narrative. * National Post *
Dion’s reconstructed narrative offers a new (and specifically Quebecois) voice, one that is refreshingly direct and compulsively readable. * Montreal Review of Boo

  • Winner of Forest of Reading, White Pine Nonfiction 2014 (Canada)
  • Short-listed for Forest of Reading - White Pine Nonfiction 2014 (Canada)

ISBN: 9781459704510

Dimensions: 216mm x 140mm x 10mm

Weight: 198g

168 pages