THE DEFENDER: Tracy L. Ward

A former journalist and graduate from Humber College’s School for Writers, Tracy L. Ward is the author behind the best-selling Marshall House Mysteries. With a passion for British and Canadian history, Tracy enjoys dividing her writing time between historical research and creative writing. Born in Cambridge, Ontario, Tracy L. Ward attended a popular arts high school where she received specialized training in three arts disciplines; drama, visual arts and vocal music, but writing is where she truly excelled. Writing school newsletters, scripting plays and completing countless unpublished full-length novels has helped Tracy define her muse. After graduation she attended Conestoga College’s Journalism-Print program where she was granted the position of editor of the student newspaper, Spoke.

Three years ago, Tracy and her husband, Daniel, purchased a ten-acre property outside Midhurst in Springwater Township where they live with their two nearly grown children. When not writing or reading Tracy can be found talking to herself while tending her overly ambitious vegetable garden.

 

THE BOOK: Random Passage by Bernice Morgan

Forced to flee England, the Andrews family books passage to a fresh start in a distant country, only to discover a barren, inhospitable land at the end of their crossing. To seventeen-year-old Lavinia, uprooted from everything familiar, it seems a fate worse than the one they left behind. Driven by loneliness she begins a journal. Random Passage satisfies the craving for those details that headstones and history books can never give: the real story of our Newfoundland ancestors, of how time and chance brought them to the forbidding shores of a new found land. It is a saga of families and of individuals; of acquisitive Mary Bundle; of charming Ned Andrews, whose thievery has turned his family into exiles; of mad Ida; of Thomas Hutchings, who might be an aristocrat, a holy man, or a murderer; and of Lavinia – who wrote down the truth and lies about them all. Random Passage has been adapted into a CBC miniseries and is now a national bestseller (Goodreads.com)