Overview

A quirky, thrilling, darkly-funny page-turner that explores the fuzzy lines between sanity and insanity, magic and reality, love and duty. It's 1969 and eight-year-old Elizabeth and her mother Margaret make a daring escape from their hard life in a factory town in Ontario's cheese belt. Stealing a school bus and slipping across the US border, they believe they are destined for greatness-and when Elizabeth discovers she can tell the fortunes of the desperate in roadside diners, she knows she's found their ticket to a better life in California. But when strangers appear with the promises of utopia, Margaret drifts into the deranged world of a doomsday cult, and young Elizabeth has no choice but to follow, watching as her mother slips further into a life of apocalyptic fervor. Thrilling, sharp, gutting, and uplifting, Once Upon an Effing Time is a story of 1970s counterculture, shifting realities, the unpredictable behavior of love, and the struggle to leave the past behind.

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9781771623605

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Reviews

“This darkly comedic tale astutely dissects the various cults that shape our lives, from the cult of family to the counter-cultural movements of the times.” —CBC Books Fall Fiction Preview “[A] remarkable achievement, both heartbreakingly poignant and wryly amusing.” —Tom Sandborn, Vancouver Sun “[A]n effing good read.” —Kathryne Cardwell, Winnipeg Free Press “Once Upon an Effing Time may not be a fairytale, but it crackles with a magic-tinged darkness and light of the best of Grimms. Its young hero is a kind of Girl, Interrupted meets Dickens’ Artful Dodger by way of the tumble-down-the-rabbit-hole Alice. Her tender-tough moxie is both heartbreaking and exhilarating, just like Buffy Cram’s debut novel itself.” —Zsuzsi Gartner, Giller finalist for Better Living Through Plastic Explosives, and the Writer’s Trust shortlisted, The Beguiling “Once Upon an Effing Time is an unforgettable story about a childhood eked out on the margins and a mother-daughter relationship that swings between tenderness, brutality and betrayal. The style is vivid, hallucinatory, and utterly compelling. Buffy Cram has written a remarkable novel about resilience in the face of tragedy.” —Susan Juby, author of Mindful of Murder “Where does the bitter magic end and the sweet real life begin in Once Upon an Effing Time? Margaret and Elizabeth will haunt your dreams as you sit in on the journey of their lives: riding an edgy line of danger, rich with the tenuous bonds of mothers and daughters, wild with the grit of staying alive. Buffy takes a broken world and makes stained glass of it, transforming the poverty of everyday life into a pilgrimage so kaleidoscopic you will want to stay on the Far Out bus, if only to keep plumbing the depths of the haunted adventures Buffy has created.” —Ceilidh Michelle, author of Vagabond “Buffy Cram is a writer whose voice radiates uncommon confidence. Cram’s debut novel arrives fully formed. Once Upon an Effing Time is compelling and vividly told, with a narrator to break your heart—and, in her brave search for belonging, to bring you hope. I loved this book.” —Carrie Snyder, author of Francie's Got a Gun “In her latest novel, Once Upon an Effing Time, Buffy Cram brings us an unflinching yet tenderly drawn portrait of Elizabeth Squire, both as the devastatingly imperiled girl she once was and the young woman she is now, yearning to be unshackled from a childhood marred by unimaginable loss. A darkly beautiful, deeply intelligent, and deftly crafted tale of heart-rending loss and heart-mending hope that grips, holds, and lingers long.” —Bobbi French, author of The Good Women of Safe Harbour “Suspenseful circumstances, black humor, catastrophizing characters, and an irreverent attitude mark Buffy Cram’s Once Upon an Effing Time, where the disturbing tension of trying to live up to goodness in a hard world skitters on the surface of every page.” —Yasuko Thanh, author of Mysterious Fragrance of the Yellow Mountains

Author Information

Buffy Cram is a writer of fiction and non-fiction, an entrepreneur and a farmer. Reviewing her book of stories, Radio Belly (2012), the Globe and Mail pronounced her “a whip-smart storyteller who aims to shake up our reading expectations in ways that delight.” She has been a fiction finalist for the Western Magazine Awards, has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize and has won a National Magazine Award. She holds an MFA in Creative Writing from UBC and lives on Salt Spring Island, BC.

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