In Crow's Field

The story of one shy girl’s path out of silence.

The coming of age of Ana, a shy girl who lives mostly in her imagination, as in the real world she is completely dominated by her playmate Frances, and by the Catholic Church. The novel is the story of her path out of silence.

In the debut novel of one of Canada’s leading playwrights, Judith Thompson brings us inside the mind of Ana, an eleven-year-old girl in a small American college town in the mid-1960s, who struggles to find the courage to tell the truth about the violent attack that led to the drowning of her best friend. She fears that her inability to speak up is why the Virgin Mary no longer appears to her before her frequent seizures. However, when her family moves to "the limestone city" of Kingston, Ontario, the ghost of her drowned friend appears to help Ana survive the violence she encounters there. In this coming of age story, Ana's resilience in the face of severe bullying and her life-threatening seizures, along with empowering friendships and a magical sexual awakening, transform her into a young woman who is finally ready to speak truth and take action, no matter the cost …