Beloved writer Ann-Marie MacDonald returns with a tale of science, magic, love and identity. Charlotte Bell suffers from a mysterious condition and is being brought up in isolation on Fayne, a vast and lonely estate straddling the border between England and Scotland. Her idyllic existence is shadowed by the magnificent portrait on the landing, which depicts her beautiful Irish-American heiress mother, and her brother Charles, both dead.

About Ann-Marie MacDonald

Ann-Marie MacDonald is a best-selling novelist, playwright and actor based in Montreal and Toronto. Her new novel, Fayne, was an instant #1 national bestseller and was named a Globe and Mail Best Book of the Year and a CBC Best Canadian Fiction Book of 2022. Her work has received multiple awards and includes Fall on Your Knees, The Way the Crow Flies, and Adult Onset. Ann-Marie was made an Officer of the Order of Canada in 2019.

Fayne (2022)

When young Charlotte Bell’s appetite for learning threatens to exceed the bounds of Fayne, the lonely estate she’s confined to due to her “condition,” her father breaks with 19th century tradition and hires a tutor to teach his daughter. When the pair discover something unexpected in the estate’s bog, her father announces he has arranged for a cure for her condition. Charlotte’s world is upended as she delves into family secrets and the heart of her own identity.

Diana Davidson’s novel Pilgrimage was a finalist for the Alberta Readers’ Choice award in 2014, and other writing has won Writers Guild of Alberta awards and appeared in 40 Below, Alberta Views, and on beer cans and coffee sleeves around the capital region. Davidson has interviewed Camilla Gibb, Louise Hay, Lawrence Hill, Amy Jones, and others for this wonderful festival. She is excited to be back at STARFest.