Harriet is writing a memoir, about her father Stan, a minor celebrity: a retired TV anchor. But it’s tied up in the disappearance of her cousin Graham, and so Harriet sets out to explore her father’s life, Graham’s disappearance, and her own life, uncovering family secrets and painful truths.

The Gift Child is wonderfully Nova Scotian - Dartmouth as a setting, the different parts of Halifax, and a small fishing village where Harriet’s cousins live. It’s funny and raw, but also sly. McCluskey frames the story as Harriet writing a memoir after being part of a writing class. Harriet revises as she goes along, inserting scenes that could have happened, revealing details long after a scene and changing everything you knew about it. She’s a consciously unreliable narrator, and it’s fun to read. How lovely it was to read this in my Haligonian backyard.