Before It Was Easy

Finalist: Whistler Independent Book Award for 2016.

Claire has always been a woman of action, a woman surging through life’s challenges, blind to the tragedies left in her wake. Claire’s younger sister Heather and Claire’s daughter Nora follow behind, picking up the pieces, making things right. Or so it has always seemed to Heather and Nora.

“When I was young Claire was my big sister,” says Heather. “When I had my own family she was my older sister who enjoyed life and maybe drank a bit too much; then she was my sister who fell down the stairs and had a brain injury, my sister who got on with the business of life and scolded me for worrying. Now she’s getting on with the business of dying and suddenly I realize I don’t know who she is.”

Before It Was Easy is a story of damage done and tenderness found. It is a story inspired by personal loss, a story that straddles the boundaries of memoir and fiction. “We tell stories to make sense of our lives,” says author Kath Curran. “Such a story may be framed within the surface details of a life lived, but reaching the deep truths—surfacing the intertwining textures of pain and tenderness that make a life real—this is the work of imagination.”

Told through the voices of its three main characters, Before It Was Easy is about learning to speak the stories that return us to our beginnings, about following those threads of pain and tenderness that reveal to us, perhaps for the first time, who we really are.

The circumstances of Kath Curran's life have taught her much about the art of leaving; these days she's enjoying exploring the doors that open through the practice of staying. Other projects include seeing anew through the eyes of her grandchildren, working on her next novel, and embracing the simple wisdom of three words inscribed on a memorial bench in Stanley Park: Gratitude. Simplicity. Service. From her home on Vancouver Island off the coast of British Columbia, Canada, Kath is an occasional contributor to her website at kathcurran.com.