“Rich and intriguing, My Mary is a compelling look into clinical depression, the trauma of being a Barnardo Home Child, and the heartbreaking story of enduring love.” -Renee Cronley, author of Burnout

Teetzel delivers a powerful historical narrative, brimming with idyllic scenes and beautiful imagery of life on a Canadian family farm. This epic tale and enduring love story spans some seventy years and shines light on one woman’s life journey as a Barnardo Home Child.

January, 1945, Rural Ontario. It’s another bleak winter for Mary Thistle. When she receives two successive pieces of bad news, she spirals into a deep melancholia, believing herself a burden to her family. After a failed suicide attempt, Charles, Mary’s husband, the one she loves and trusts the most, commits her to a psychiatric hospital. With a timeline of three months looming, Mary rallies, determined to prove herself cured and return home.

However, confronting the memories of her past is more difficult than she had expected. And when therapy is paired with electroconvulsive treatments, Mary is left with an outcome she did not bargain for.

In this deeply touching memoir, Dawn Beecroft Teetzel returns to her childhood in the countryside, retracing the roots of a life-altering friendship with a rough-around-the-edges, old bachelor, Earl Brush. Though life has been kind to her—she’s happily married with two beautiful daughters—a nagging sensation stirs memories of peaceful afternoons spent with Earl as a young girl. As Dawn fondly chronicles her childhood and Earl’s dream to build himself a cabin in the woods, she confronts the possibility of past lives and what never was but could have been.

Brimming with tenderness and imbued with the calming sounds and sights of the woods, Paradise Acres is an uplifting account of growing up, family bonds, friendship, and how one person can leave a tremendous, lasting impression on another, even long after death. It is a heartwarming coming-of-age story that tells the tale of an unlikely friendship between a young girl and a weathered, elderly farmer, proving age is just a number and that love does indeed span generations, perhaps even lifetimes.

Written purely for personal reasons, Paradise Acres is not available to the public.