When Lesley Crewe, BA 77, was a teenager living in Montreal — and later a student at Concordia — she looked forward to her summers in Cape Breton, N.S., to visit family.
“I loved sitting around the kitchen table with my mom, as well as my grandmother and her sisters, to listen to their stories about people in small towns,” Crewe says from her home in Homeville, Cape Breton. “They were small stories — like how an organist running down the aisle during a church service later told everyone it was because she had left a pie in the oven.”
Those kitchen table sessions stuck with Crewe for decades. After years of raising her children and writing for magazines, she decided to pen her first novel at age 50.
“I never thought I was a writer, but I had all these notes from a diary I kept — so why not do something with them?” she says, recalling her first big break.
Crewe’s debut, Relative Happiness (Nimbus Publishing, 2014), which centres on four sisters navigating love and contentment, struck a chord with readers. Crewe quickly gained a loyal following and her publisher called for more.
“I have fans who will buy whatever book has my name on it,” she says with a laugh.
Crewe has since published 17 novels, some of which are set in Cape Breton and rooted in family dynamics, humour and the quiet tensions of everyday life.
Her most recent novel, The Spirit of Scatarie (2025), is set on the remote island off Cape Breton and follows three friends whose lives are shaped by history, place and each other.
Crewe is particularly drawn to past decades. “I love going back to simpler times — the ’50s, ’60s — and writing about those little things everyone can relate to, like a purse that snaps shut or the junk drawer we all have.”
