DarkWinter Press New Release: Little River Bridge by DorothyJane Kavanaugh!

DarkWinter Press is thrilled to announce our latest release, the compelling debut novel by DorothyJane Kavanaugh, Little River Bridge, available now in paperback and e-version for Kindle. You can buy it here!

About Little River Bridge:

Gerald Humphries, better known as Hump, is a one-armed former army medic with a dark past. As a rum-runner who first transported illegal alcohol and then infants across the Detroit River, he lives on the edge of the law. When he meets and marries Polly, a prostitute from Detroit, together they become saviours to women in Canada, helping them with unwanted pregnancies and avoiding scrutiny from the authorities.

Under questionable circumstances, Sister Brigid has been transferred from Montreal to teach at Our Lady Parish school in Ojibwa, a small town in South Western Ontario along the Detroit River. When she meets Hump, now older and widowed, an alcoholic janitor living in the Back-End of Ojibwa, their paths collide in a way that could send them both to prison.

Together, Sister Brigid and Hump take on the task of ‘saving’, while others—Gran, Collette, Melissa, and her best friend Anita have their own complex lives to live and decisions to make.

Set in Canada during the years of prohibition, back-street abortions, and baby trafficking, Little River Bridge connects the lives of those in the Back-End with those In-Town, where occurrences on one side have long standing implications on the other.   

Advance Praise for Little River Bridge:

“Kavanaugh captures in all their complexities and courage the lives of an intrepid few who risked their own livelihoods and freedom to help young women caught between the choice of a lifetime of social ostracism and the chance of death at the hands of back-alley abortionists. This is a book that will stay with you long after you have reached the last page.”   

—Nino Ricci, award-winning author and Member of the Order of Canada

“Set in Southern Ontario along the Detroit River, between the Back-End and In-Town, each chapter of DorothyJane Kavanaugh’s emotionally gripping Little River Bridge carefully reveals a new secret to readers, another layer of local mystery. This book offers a world of rum-running, rationed sugar, herbs & roots mixed with castor oil, but also one filled with real and metaphorical skeletons submerged in its fast-flowing river. At its core lives steadfast Sister Brigid, who speaks “English words with French music.” Sister Brigid carries her own poignant story and the heartbreaking stories of other young women, as she and WWII vet “Hump” work together to perform their medical “savings.” Just “like molasses running over toast,” the past interrupts the present. These characters insist on reclaiming their voices, and each one has a vital story to tell.

—Nicole Markotić, author of Rough Patch and After Beowulf

“DorothyJane Kavanaugh’s Little River Bridge takes place in early twentieth-century Southwestern Ontario and Montréal, when Roman Catholic influence kept (mainly) women under its silk-enshrouded iron fist. The story tackles tough topics such as back-alley abortion and black market baby adoptions in the time of the rum-runners. Its heroes are nuns, former prostitutes, and a one-armed man called Hump. Ultimately, Little River Bridge is Hump’s story: how does a one-armed man survive in a time when life is difficult for even the hardiest of souls? Through Hump’s experiences, we face questions such as:  in a society whose laws tend towards ambiguity, and its churches’ doctrines (not so tacitly) advocate misogyny, how “good” must a “good man” be to be seen as “good?” At times, Kavanaugh’s words sucker us with gut-punches: “The tiny belly we teased [Tess] about hadn’t grown, the fetus weighs under two pounds and Geneviève tells me, ‘A girl; she won’t live.’ But we expect Tess to live. Neither survives.” Little River Bridge is not a “feel good” story, because it’s not meant to nostalgize or celebrate the old days. In the end, Little River Bridge does instill hope; however faint.

—Gord Grisenthwaite, author of Tales for Late Night Bonfires (2023, Freehand Books) and  Home Waltz (Palimpsest Press), finalist for 2021 Governor General’s Award for Fiction.

About DorothyJane Kavanaugh:

DorothyJane Kavanaugh is the author of two previously published short stories. “Agentis,” published in Blank Spaces, was nominated for the Pushcart Prize and the Journey Award. “Schlep-1943” was published by Freefall. She has published a travel article in The Canadian Journal of Speech Language Pathology and Audiology, Ottawa, ON and poetry in Whiskey Sour City, Black Moss Press. She resides with her two cats, Mr. Yeats and Princess Isadora in Windsor, Ontario.