In the early 1990s, Caitlin Maharg, grieving the loss of her parents, leaves everything she knows in Canada for Northern Ireland to pursue her love of poetry while living in a cottage by the Irish Sea. Feeling like a child again in a distant land still affected by the Troubles, she is haunted by the secrets her parents deaths unearthed. In her longing for emotional closeness, she befriends Andy Evans, a well-known poet with a roguish charm. Their attraction soon leads to a love affair. Flouting the paisley headscarf of respectability, she plunges into a relationship that gives her an entry to the literary world, but at a price. Filled with insights into grief, longing and creativity, The Most Cunning Heart is a novel about how a quiet heroine learns to navigate deception, love and loss. (From Palimpsest Press)
The Most Cunning Heart is available as an ebook.
The Most Cunning Heart is mentioned on CBC Books.
The Most Cunning Heart was a finalist for the Fred Kerner Book Award.
The Most Cunning Heart is on The Miramichi Reader’s Best of 2022 list.
The Most Cunning Heart appears in CBC Book’s Most Anticipated Titles and Canadian Fiction to Watch For.
The Most Cunning Heart is a Top 10 Read for St. Patrick’s Day.
“Would it be that easy to find a bomb?” Read an excerpt of The Most Cunning Heart in Open Book.
The Most Cunning Heart appears on the 49th Shelf Most Anticipated Spring Fiction List.
Purchase The Most Cunning Heart at Palimpsest Press, Amazon.
The Most Cunning Heart is a Featured Release.
The Most Cunning Heart: Watch Graham’s reading and interview with Alison Gadsby at Junction Reads.
Praise for The Most Cunning Heart
“Sometimes a quest begins in loss and grief. In Catherine Graham’s The Most Cunning Heart, a woman searches for inner freedom by understanding her mother’s story and learning to defy abusive forces. She rediscovers the lost mother who taught her that the tripod begins with a firm base, and fights to recognize the “quarried heart.” A warm, beautifully written tale of self-discovery.”
— Kim Echlin, author of Speak, Silence
“Set in the early 90s, the novel follows Caitlin, who leaves Canada in a fog of grief after her parents’ deaths, for Northern Ireland. Her parents’ passing revealed secrets she’d never known, and against a backdrop of cold sea and political turmoil, Caitlin enters into a love affair, a complicated—and at times unkind—literary social circle, and a transformation that has been long in coming…. this elegant, tough novel explores creativity and identity, grief and family.”
— Open Book
“Catherine Graham’s new novel, The Most Cunning Heart, is one of the loveliest novels I’ve read this year. It deals with love, loss, grief, creativity, feminism, strength, and how a woman can survive emotional abuse. It’s a beautifully written novel.”
— Kim Fahner, These Wings
“Poet and novelist, Catherine Graham’s coming of age novel, The Most Cunning Heart, is one of the most subtle, psychologically astute depictions of relationship abuse — the kind where the young woman victim is often the last to understand her predicament. A captivating read with an ending that doesn’t disappoint, Graham’s poetic self is everywhere evident, but no more so than in her cunning understanding of the heart.”
— Kath Jonathan, The Resistance Painter, Spring 2024
“This is contemporary literary fiction at its finest.”
— James M. Fisher, The Miramichi Reader
“Poetry and a change of scenery from Ontario to Ulster help Caitlin accept the deaths of her parents while embroiling her in the self-centred machinations of a charismatic Irish rogue. Andy Evans, a successful poet, uses cunning to draw Caitlin’s heart into his deceitful life. Finding strength in her mother’s memory, Caitlin overcomes abuse and neglect to re-discover herself. Catherine Graham has added to her impressive poetry collection with another engaging novel. A story of tragedy, triumph, and self-discovery with a journey through beautiful Northern Ireland.”
— Fred Kerner Book Award Judges
“Set in the early 1990’s, this short, beautifully written, lyrical novel tells the story of Caitlin Maharg, a poetry student and teacher who, when facing the loss of her parents, leaves her home in Canada to study in an exclusive poetry workshop in Northern Ireland … a quiet, captivating novel that explores the inner workings of the grieving heart as it learns to understand and heal itself.”
— Julie’s Reading Corner
“The Most Cunning Heart is composed with the beauty and precision that we’ve come to expect from @catgrahampoet’s poetry. A great way to take in Ireland without leaving the comfort of your home.”
— Jeff Dupuis, Umboi Island: A Creature X Mystery
“In The Most Cunning Heart, Catherine Graham takes the reader to Ireland with Caitlin Maharg as she makes a new start after the death of her parents. Through Graham’s exquisite and poetic prose, we feel every moment of Caitlin’s courageous and hopeful journey to find herself and her own poetic voice.”
— Alison Gadsby. Junction Reads