Coming in 2026
Shortlisted for the Guernica Prize, my Southern Ontario Gothic debut novel Nightshade, inspired by the women of my father’s family in the Ontario tobacco belt, launches with Assembly Press in 2026. https://assemblypress.ca/
The time is early 1980s. The story is told by Zelda, 18, working with her mother and aunts in the southern Ontario tobacco fields owned by disturbingly attractive farmer Jack Tormentine. Housed in a decrepit motel, and when not working for Mister Tormentine, the family performs across the region with their puppets, all the while dreaming of the day they can own their own house. Zelda, however, is intoxicated by the gorjo (non-Romany) world, and is hired as a “Gypsy good luck charm” by damaged, manipulative Missus Tormentine who is desperate to conceive a child.
Interwoven with Zelda’s story is the narrative of Puri Dai (Grandmother), the beloved puppet who warns of the devil of the tobacco fields, a harbinger of death and destruction; she laments the dark path Zelda has chosen. Lured into increasingly precarious entanglements, Zelda turns from her family, including her beloved Puri Dai.
As Zelda struggles with her simmering feelings toward Tormentine, as well as her infatuation with Missus Tormentine, the devil of the tobacco fields appears to her at night in the motel parking lot….
Advance Praise
Nightshade gives a very rare and precious insight into a Romany family and community, their language and history; and I for one am so grateful it has been written. Reading the novel, the author’s words come from a wise and very old nomadic tradition. For many of us in the disconnected 21st century, it is time to speak about our hidden Romani identity and heritage. Today, it is about being a participant in a global story. Reading Nightshade, I felt like I was coming home.
- Frances Roberts Reilly, Canadian Romany poet, essayist, storyteller, author of Parramisha: A Romani Poetry Collection
Lynn Hutchinson Lee’s moving story about a Romany family working in the tobacco fields of southern Ontario during the 80’s is a tour de force. Simultaneously prose poem and page-turner, Nightshade draws us into the lives of its characters. Readers will come to love fragile Liza-May, who tends to ill and injured birds, feisty Lilly, who stands up to injustice, and protagonist Zelda. Eighteen, Zelda longs for her own life and, like so many young women before her, makes both missteps and giant steps discovering what her own path might be. And the puppets! Grandmother puppet Puri Dai’s voice infuses the novel with a gentle wisdom, as she attempts to protect both her wooden and human charges.
- Ursula Pflug, author of the novella Down From, the novels Mountain and Green Music, and the short story collection Seeds and Other Stories