Lise makes maps of places that used to exist and lives with a man she doesn’t love. Her mother, Vee, pines for the husband she lost so many years ago, and can’t stop thinking of the place she grew up and left behind on purpose.

Things come to a head on the first day of spring when Vee finds a package on her doorstep, a box of mementos that she buried 25 years ago at her husband’s grave. Who would be cruel enough to dig it up and send it back to her so many years later? And why did she bury it in the first place?

The mystery is slowly revealed as Vee drifts in and out of memories–her childhood in the North during the 1950s and 1960s, her love affair with a charming Québécois man, a family wrenched apart by pride, a loss that unhinged her–and as Lise pieces together the puzzle of her mother’s past in an attempt not only to understand her mother’s life, but also her own.

What genre is it?
Fiction, with literary tendencies.

I wrote Fathom Lines with a couple of different intentions: first, as a love letter to Toronto where I live now, and to Northern Ontario where I spent most of my summers growing up; second, as an exploration of how memories tie us to places and to other people, for good and bad.

Tell us what we need to know about Lise and Vee.
As the book opens, Vee is a very soon-to-be-retired librarian, mother, and widow. She is smart and no-nonsense, but wasn’t always as reserved as she is now. She worries that her daughter is unhappy and unwilling to do anything about it.

Lise works for the Preservation Society and wishes she didn’t. She lives with a guy that she isn’t sure she likes, much less loves. She worries that her mother is having trouble with her memory.

Tell us a bit about yourself.
Like my main characters, I live downtown in Toronto. A few years ago, after graduating with a History degree from the University of Toronto, I attended the Humber School for Writers and won a Certificate of Distinction for my completed manuscript. Fathom Lines is a product of that early manuscript.

Do you have a website?
Certainly. You can find my writing and reading-related thoughts at erinbedford.ca.

You can find me on Twitter here @ErinLBedford and on Facebook here: https://www.facebook.com/erin.bedford.543.

What’s next?
I’m working on a historical novel, based on the experiences of a real man, set in York, Ontario (what is now Toronto) at the turn of the nineteenth century. Murder is involved, and war, and love, of course. Royals, too.