Abstract
Highlighting the tension between insiders and outsiders, and set against a sinister backdrop, Fireweed and Bracken follows the life of Effie Cambridge who, awkward and searching, leaves her complicated life in Ontario to work as a high school teacher in Charlottetown, PEI, where she makes friends, courts rejection, finds love, and struggles to come to terms with not only herself but with the life she is attempting to build in a place she doesn't belong. Drawing on an inner strength and the humour to explore the pleasures and challenges of living in a modern pastoral idyll, Effie comes to understand something of her value in the world and the ramifications of systemic exclusion.