All the Things We Leave Behind

Finalist, New Brunswick Book Award for Fiction

A novel of absence and adolescence by the author of the award-winning The Town That Drowned.

It's 1977. Seventeen-year-old Violet is left behind by her parents to manage their busy roadside antique stand for the summer. Her restless older brother, Bliss, has disappeared, leaving home without warning, and her parents are off searching for clues. Violet is haunted by her brother's absence while trying to cope with her new responsibilities. Between visiting a local hermit, who makes twig furniture for the shop, and finding a way to land the contents of the mysterious Vaughan estate, Violet acts out with her summer boyfriend, Dean, and wonders about the mysterious boneyard. But what really keeps her up at night are thoughts of Bliss's departure and the white deer, which only she has seen.

All the Things We Leave Behind is about remembrance and attachment, about what we collect and what we leave behind. In this highly affecting novel, Nason explores the permeability of memory and the sometimes confusing bonds of human emotion.

Riel Nason is a writer and textile artist. She is the author of three novels (including one for middle-grade readers), a children’ s picture book, and two books on quilting. The Town That Drowned was her debut novel. It won the Commonwealth Book Prize for Canada and Europe and the Margaret and John Savage First Book Award. She lives in Quispamsis, New Brunswick.