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Dark deeds at the Spa Springs Hotel in Nova Scotia in the 1880s echo down the decades, bringing out the worst and the best in people high and low.
Mr. Leeson allows he wanted "to have blurred the line be-tween fact and fiction", and he's done so wonderfully. There are characters to care for living vivid lives in a wholly believable historic Annapolis Valley. The local drama and colour are set credibly against a broader and changing world. I thoroughly enjoyed this time between the lines.
Don Connolly, former host, CBC Information Morning
Anyone who thinks Nova Scotia history is boring should read The Secret of the Spring. Sometimes touching, some-times violent, this family saga demonstrates the full spectrum of human nature. Garry Leeson brings a colourful past to life.
Wendy Elliott, Valley Journal Advertiser columnist
The Secret of the Spring reveals the extraordinary secrets hidden in ordinary lives-fragile, then lost and forgotten in a generational blink of an eye.
Blurring fact and fiction and capturing the quirks and cadence of a vanishing rural Nova Scotia, Garry Leeson has spun an intricate tale which rings clearly and resonates long after the book's been finished.
Mike Bienstock, Rural Delivery
About the author
Garry Leeson is an award-winning author, playwright, auctioneer, and by times, logger and farmer, from the Annapolis Valley in Nova Scotia. His works have appeared in periodicals in Canada and USA; his plays have had productions in Kentville, and Lunenburg and CBC Radio has showcased his short stories. He was long listed for CBC Writes in the Creative Nonfiction category in 2012, was a recipient of an Arts Nova Scotia grant and, in 2020 received the Margaret and John Savage First Book Award for Non-Fiction for The Dome Chronicles. Garry lives with his wife, Andrea, and a menagerie of animals, in the community of Harmony. The curious of mind are welcome to visit garryleeson.com.
