Let Us Be True

 

 Published by Coteau Books 2015. To be reissued by Shadowpaw Press, Spring, 2024

 

"Secrets are like dark and angry ghosts…

 

…and they don’t just haunt you. They haunt everyone you love."

 

From the killing fields of Europe to the merciless beauty of the Canadian prairies, Let Us Be True tells the story of three women whose lives have been shaped and damaged by secrets – their own and those stretching back through generations.

 

At the heart of the novel is Pearl Calder, a woman who has kept her past from her daughters, only to watch it somehow haunt them all the same. Pearl’s secrets are rooted in events over which she had not control – a mother’s death, a father destroyed by one war, a brother lost to another and a sister who abandons her to save herself.

 

"...Let Us Be True remains vital, present and taut throughout. A story as starkly beautiful as a prairie landscape."
The Globe and Mail

"...delicously vivid prose..."
CBC Books

"Buffie has crafted a stunning addition to the Canadian literary canon…"
The Calgary Journal

 

SELECTED SHORT STORIES :

"Cleaning Day," Prairie Fire, Volume 39.2 2018

"An Unpredictable Certainty," Vagrant Review of New Fiction, 2015

"God’s Hotel,” Room, Volume 29.3, 2006