Home on the Strange

Biography & Memoir, Humour, Vancouver Island & Gulf Islands,

Chronicles of Motherhood, Mayhem, and Matters of the Heart

By (author): Susan Lundy

ISBN 9781772033649

Softcover | Publication Date: April 13, 2021

Book Dimensions: 5.5 in. x 8.5 in.

224 Pages

$22.95 CAD

E-Book Price: $11.99 CAD

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About the Book

A funny, heart-warming ode to motherhood written by an award-winning journalist and humour columnist.

For Susan Lundy, motherhood began when she moved into her boyfriend’s Salt Spring Island home at the age of twenty-one. Her new living arrangement came with furniture, a pair of kids, and a biting gerbil named Quasimodo. Susan was a career-oriented budding journalist, eager to write her way to fame and fortune. Becoming a mom was not part of her plan—at least not yet. But after surveying her new domicile with quiet horror at first, she grew into her new role, discarding many of the lessons her mother had given her about keeping house and inventing her own rules as she went along.

By the time her two daughters were born, Susan had already fallen deeply in love with motherhood. Moreover, she chronicled her family’s topsy-turvy Gulf Island life in a collection of popular newspaper and magazine columns. Home on the Strange follows Susan’s journey from pregnancy to parenthood, career milestones to birds-and-bees talks, separation to new love at mid-life, and cross-country road trips to empty nesting during a global pandemic. Charming, poignant, and frequently hilarious, this is the perfect book for mothers or moms-to-be at any stage of their journey.

About the Author(s)

Susan Lundy has been a writer since the age of six, when she re-invented the lemonade stand by selling handmade books at roadside booths. Today, she is a multiple-award-winning writer—including a two-time recipient of the prestigious Jack Webster Award of Distinction—with a thirty-five-year career in print journalism. She is well known throughout BC as the managing editor of Boulevard magazine and is also the author of the book Heritage Apples.

Reviews

"A delightful big-hearted book full of wit and wisdom that had me bursting into laughter every other page. Read this book no matter what stage of life you’re at—it will brighten your day, and you’ll see motherhood in a whole new light."
—Amy Chua, Yale Law professor and author of Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother and Political Tribes: Group Instinct and the Fate of Nations

"Years ago, I learned that whenever Susan Lundy’s child-stuffed VW van braked to a halt in a swim-meet parking lot, joy would tumble out. This book, in which she charts everyday family life with a deft, self-deprecating wit, is about that joy."
— Jack Knox, award-winning journalist and bestselling author of the Leacock Medal-nominated Opportunity Knox: Twenty Years of Award-Losing Humour Writing

"Susan Lundy (no relation) has written a delightful and charming collection of stories about life on a small and, yes, strange, island (which I call home as well). Her warm, loving, and humorous accounts cumulatively unveil the extraordinary universal truths in the plain particulars of all our lives."
—Derek Lundy, bestselling author of Borderlands: Riding the Edge of America and The Bloody Red Hand: A Journey Through Truth, Myth, and Terror in Northern Ireland

"Susan Lundy takes us along with her on a rollercoaster ride through her life as a Salt Spring Islander, a wife, a mother, a journalist, and a keen observer on the foibles and challenges of living a contemporary west coast life. She writes with humour, honesty, and humanity. And hope. Her book is something we all need right now."
—Ian Haysom, bestselling author of Grandfathered: Dispatches from the Trenches of Modern Grandparenthood

"What any reader of Home on the Strange will enjoy, though, is that Lundy’s stories are vividly and often hilariously told. [Lundy] is a brilliant storyteller and it is not possible to read this book without laughing out loud — and frequently."
—Gail Sjuberg, AQUA Magazine