Category: Adult Fiction (18+), 250 pages
Genre: general fiction, literary fiction
Content Rating: PG-13 + M: because of mature themes (youth homelessness and human trafficking), and physical abuse, some rough language.
“The first thing you need to know: They’re not antiques.
The second thing you need to know: I’m not his daughter.”
Abandoned first by her father, and then by her mother, Frankie has been left in the care of her deeply religious grandmother. When her grandmother’s religious convictions tip into delusion, Frankie decides to run away.
Life on the street in Toronto is hard, and with winter coming, it gets tougher. This is when Frankie first meets Francis, a man old enough to be her father. He starts training her in “the game,” as she comes to call it; buying, stealing, and reselling “inventory” at inflated prices. Through winter, spring, and early summer, the two become a team, traveling around small towns and villages in southern Ontario.
As Frankie discovers, life on the road holds dangers she can’t anticipate, and her precarious world tips into disaster when Francis abandons her in an unfamiliar town. Betrayed, alone, and deserted, Frankie realizes she’s in a dangerous situation — will she be able to find her way out on her own?
The Antique Picker’s Daughter explores youth homelessness, human trafficking, and one young woman’s search for safety.
Melanie Dugan is the author of Sometime Daughter (“A stunning debut,” The Kingston Whig-Standard), Revising Romance (“…heartwarming, amusing, and…downright sexy,” Midwestern Book Review), Dead Beautiful (“Artful and funny,” Kathryn Kuitenbrouwer), Bee Summers (“…a carefully wrought portrayal of the way we carry trauma with us through life,” Brenda Schmidt, Quill & Quire), and Hard White (“It is a very compelling and beautifully-crafted story…I highly recommend it,” Skeleton Press).
She lived in Boston, Toronto and London, England, before settling in Kingston, Ontario, where she now lives.
She has worked in libraries and bookstores, and was Associate Publisher at Quarry Press in Kingston, and also served as Managing Editor for Poetry Canada, Quarry Magazine and Canadian Fiction Magazine.
In 2009 she was promotions director for the inaugural Kingston WritersFest.
She has studied writing with Leon Rooke, Keath Fraser, Kim Moritsugu, Helen Humphreys and Anita Rau Badami.
Her short stories have been shortlisted for several awards including the CBC Literary Award.
