Nina Discombe 2nd reading

Secrets can be insidious.  If you’ve ever had a secret, or kept one for someone else, you’ve had the monkey on your back.

Big secrets especially have a way of isolating us from others, but they also cut us off from ourselves.  They have a way of turning our lives into a pretense, a masquerade – a central theme in The Leprous Veil of Love.

In love with her husband’s boss, Manon makes a series of ill-fated choices that push her further and further into her self-imposed prison until the fateful morning at the water’s edge, when Emma’s waters break, and all the lies are spilled onto the sand.

If you are a woman who has loved and lost, if you are a woman who has been betrayed by a lover or a friend, please come to sip coffee and hear Nina read a few pages from her new novel. 

About the author

Born in Montreal, Quebec, Nina Discombe grew up in a small French Canadian village, where les Soeurs de Jesus-Marie taught her to write using a nib pen and where school prayers were recited six times a day –  before and after recess, before and after lunch, at the beginning of the school day and at its end.

For the last twelve years, she has spent her winters in Mexico on the shores of Lake Chapala in another small village, San Antonio Tlayacapan, where the day begins – very shortly after the cocks crow and the dogs start barking – with the priest intoning Hail Marys over a crackly loud speaker.

The Leprous Veil of Love could not have been written without those defining moments.

See Nina's first reading for more photos.

Nina Discombe