Once Upon an Effing Time

A quirky, thrilling, darkly-funny page-turner that explores the fuzzy lines between sanity and insanity, magic and reality, love and duty.

It's 1969 and eight-year-old Elizabeth and her mother Margaret make a daring escape from their hard life in a factory town in Ontario's cheese belt. Stealing a school bus and slipping across the US border, they believe they are destined for greatness--and when Elizabeth discovers she can tell the fortunes of the desperate in roadside diners, she knows she's found their ticket to a better life in California.

But when strangers appear with the promises of utopia, Margaret drifts into the deranged world of a doomsday cult, and young Elizabeth has no choice but to follow, watching as her mother slips further into a life of apocalyptic fervor.

Thrilling, sharp, gutting, and uplifting, Once Upon an Effing Time is a story of 1970s counterculture, shifting realities, the unpredictable behavior of love, and the struggle to leave the past behind.

Author: Buffy Cram
Publisher: Douglas & McIntyre
Published: 04/09/2024
Pages: 320
Binding Type: Paperback
Weight: 1.05lbs
Size: 8.90h x 6.00w x 0.90d
ISBN: 9781771623605

About the Author
Cram, Buffy: - Buffy Cram is a writer of fiction and non-fiction, an entrepreneur and a farmer. Reviewing her book of stories, Radio Belly (2012), the Globe and Mail pronounced her "a whip-smart storyteller who aims to shake up our reading expectations in ways that delight." She has been a fiction finalist for the Western Magazine Awards, has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize and has won a National Magazine Award. She holds an MFA in Creative Writing from UBC and lives on Salt Spring Island, BC.