A Fine Daughter

A Fine Daughter won several awards including the 1999 Alberta Writer’s Guild Henry Kreisel Award for Best First Book, the Georges Bugnet Award for Best Novel and Alberta Trade Book of the Year Award. Additionally, this novel was short-listed for the Chapters/Books in Canada First Novel Award and nominated for the W.O. Mitchell – City of Calgary Book Award. A Fine Daughter won the hearts of Calgarians and was on the Calgary Herald’s best-seller list for several weeks and became a best-seller in its first year of publication.

Set in Little Cypress, a small prairie town in the 1950’s, A Fine Daughter is the story of Fran and her illegitimate daughter, Cora. Together, on a magical journey toward love and acceptance, they learn to confront the strict morality that has made them outsiders. They learn too, that behind the mask of small-town virtue they can nurture a secret happiness.

As sinuous as the wind that enchants Little Cypress, A Fine Daughter stands misery on its head and celebrates a cloud of monarch butterflies that beclouds the judgment of the town’s citizens. It asks “What if?” and pulls aside the curtain on long held secrets. It watches the hidden center of Little Cypress unfold like the first bud of spring.

Revealing the many steps people take to protect their private lives, A Fine Daughter is a provocative look at equivocating realities, at passion and appearance, and at love and regret on one sensual, magical, life-affirming day – a day that will change the town of Little Cypress forever.

Praise for A Fine Daughter

"This iridescent gem of a novel marks an impressive debut."
 – Library Journal
"Niven’s language is finely attuned to scents and tastes, to gestures and kinesthesia…a deeply felt sketch of one town’s time of change." – Publishers Weekly

"Niven’s voice will seduce."– Booklist

"A rare treat…fresh and compelling. "
– Saskatoon Star Phoenix

"Niven takes an age-old story – the unwed mother – and shows the humanity, both the pleasure and the pain, in the profound act of giving birth and being a mother."
 – Calgary Herald

"I enjoyed this novel for the thoughts it sent fluttering about what might be, about opening oneself to the joys and risks of possibility, about the conflict between cocooned lives and butterfly dreams."
 – Hamilton Spectator