The Good Women of Safe Harbour

2023 Longlist

Frances Delaney is staring down the last days of her life. Looking back over her fifty-eight years with wit and no small amount of regret, she sees not the life she wanted but the one that happened. An idyllic childhood in the small Newfoundland fishing town of Safe Harbour was darkened by the loss of her father at sea, an unwanted pregnancy and a betrayal by her closest friend, Annie Malone. Frances and Annie were inseparable, and this rupture rocked Frances to the core. In the aftermath, she fled to St. John’s and a solitary life nothing like what she and Annie had dreamed of as their grand escape. Now, with the help of her young, optimistic friend Edie, Frances begins a journey toward resolution and back to Annie and Safe Harbour. With these good women in her corner, Frances can at last chart her course to living on her own terms, right to the very end. A powerfully touching celebration of friendship and forgiveness, The Good Women of Safe Harbour is about a woman who finally gives herself a chance to love and be loved. It’s a story that is impossible to read with dry eyes.

About the Author:

Bobbi French was born and raised in Newfoundland and Labrador. A former psychiatrist, she is the author of Finding Me in France, a memoir chronicling the year following her decision to leave medicine to pursue writing. She lives in Halifax, Nova Scotia.

Nominating Library’s Comments:

The Good Women of Safe Harbour by Bobbi French is a brilliant novel with rich characters and a strong sense of place. Set in Newfoundland in the final, beautiful summer of Frances Delaney’s “small” life, this book is wildly joyful and deeply sad.

It challenges the reader to reevaluate the ways in which we see our lives, the good and the bad.

This novel handles such difficult topics as mental illness, assisted suicide, abortion and mothers separated from their children while never for a moment leaving the central premise that life is beautiful and precious and must be celebrated. This book is a celebration. – Newfoundland and Labrador Public Libraries, Canada