Kit's Law Book

It is the 1950s and just outside of the Newfoundland fishing village of Haire's Hollow, fourteen-year-old Kit Pitman lives with her mentally handicapped mother, Josie, both of them cared for and protected by Kit's grandmother Lizzie. The three live a life of hardship, but there is a lot of love in this family. A tragic chain of events leads to demands that Josie be sent to an institution and Kit to an orphanage. Alliances are formed with an odd assortment of characters and the village is thrown into a turbulent upheaval that tests the strength of Kit's relationships with her friends and her family.

Sunday Tribune

Kit Pitman is fourteen and lives in a ramshackle cottage on the outer banks of Newfoundland, where isolation is all she knows. The only visitors are fogbound fishermen and the occasional young man brought ashore to keep the bloodlines clean. But Kit's isolation is compounded by the mystery that surrounds her family and her illegitimate birth. Her mother, Josie, is mentally challenged and often runs wild among the clapboard houses that dot the shore. Meanwhile, her grandmother Lizzy staunchly guards them both from the disapproving glances that pious towns-folk cast their way. But when Lizzy dies suddenly, Kit and her childlike mother are left vulnerable to life's harsh realities and unexpected dangers that threaten to break them in two. A wrenching story ensues, as Donna Morrissey depicts with exceptional grace the way the lines between mother and daughter in this unlikely relationship, although blurred, are no less felt. Kit's Law is a novel of extraordinary, almost mythical power and marks the debut of an enormous new talent. Entrancing affecting haunting Donna Morrissey has much in common with Thomas Hardy.