On South Mountain— The Dark Secrets of the Goler Clan (20th anniversary edition)

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Stories of South Mountain and its notorious Goler Clan were often told in whispers—if at all.

For over a century, a pattern of  physical abuse, incest, and psychological torture defined the mountain community in rural Nova Scotia, and residents of the nearby Annapolis Valley turned a blind eye. But when a fourteen-year-old South Mountain girl finally told the untellable, that story and its ensuing investigation shocked the country.

On South Mountain records the gruesome courtroom testimony of young victims pulled from their squalid homes on the mountain. Relatives, they admitted, did horrific things to them. Over and over again. Their courageous testimony helped convict uncles and fathers. Award-winning duo David Cruise and Alison Griffiths meticulously outlines the history of the area and the social forces that conspired to isolate and impoverish the Golers. When and how did they become outcasts? The answer is complex, and hundreds of years in the making.

Thirty years after its initial release, this new, expanded edition of the book the Vancouver Sun called “a terrible story, beautifully told” contains a new Preface in which Griffiths reflects on her role in the telling of this story and her earliest encounters with the Golers, a family whose name became synonymous with dysfunction and abuse.

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