Friday 56 & Book Beginnings: The Deception of Livvy Higgs

For Book Beginnings:
I step carefully onto the iced side steps, knees creaking like an old stair, and fling feed to the grey hubble of pigeons coo-cooing about the doorplace. 

- p. 1 (ARC, page may change), The Deception of Livvy Higgs by Donna Morrissey

For Friday 56:

"Mother isn't there," I want to say, but there's a sickness in my belly.

- p. 56 (ARC, page may change), The Deception of Livvy Higgs by Donna Morrissey

I won this book on Goodreads and it seems like a powerful read that it seems a bit intimidating! Have you ever felt that way?

Synopsis: For two traumatic days, Livvy Higgs is besieged by a series of small heart attacks while the ghost of her younger self leads her back through a past devastated by lies and secrets.

The story opens in Halifax in 2009, travels back to the French Shore of Newfoundland during the mid-thirties and the heyday of the Maritime shipping industry, makes its way to wartorn Halifax during the battle of the Atlantic in World War II, then leaps ahead to the bedside of the elder Livvy.

Caught between a troubled past, and her present and worsening living conditions, Livvy is forced to pick apart the lies and secrets told by her greedy, prideful father, Durwin Higgs, who judges her a failure, and her formidable Grandmother Creed, who has mysteriously aligned herself with Livvy's father, despite their mutual hatred.

Tending to Livvy during her illness is her young next-door neighbour, Gen, a single mother, social-work student, and part-time drug dealer. Overnight, a violent scene embroils the two in each other's lives in a manner that will entwine them forever. In The Deception of Livvy Higgs, the inimitable Morrissey has written a powerful tale, the Stone Angel of the East Coast. 

 Don't forget to leave a link so I can check out you answers! TGIF!