Mary Pat Cude

Mary Pat Cude is the author of The Bargain. She lives with her husband, Wilfred Cude, in a house they built themselves on the southern shore of the Bras D'Or Lake on Cape Breton Island. She has four children, and five grand-children. In 1964, she graduated with her R.N. from the Victoria General Hospital School of Nursing. Although working part-time, she was in the main a stay-at-home mom for many years; however, with her family grown up, she returned to university and graduated from St. Francis Xavier in 1994 with a B.Sc. in Geology. She has written poetry and critical reviews, and is presently working on her second novel.

The Bargain is set in Richmond County, NS and is about two bargains, one personal and the other national: the marriage between 16-year old Elizabeth Skinner and 35-year old Captain James Walker, and the political bargain of Confederation that created our modern Canada. Though we remain thoroughly in the Canada of the past, we find that the important considerations of modern life are consistently foreshadowed: neither personal relationships nor political issues like separatism, the fisheries and foreign aid, have changed that much over more than a century. We learn that bargains then and now can be fraught with a good measure of deceit and intrigue, and threatened by religious and ethnic intolerance; yet they can be made to work.

Selected List of Publications

"Friendly Fire in Downhill Chance," a review article on Donna Morrisey's Downhill Chance", The Antigonish Review, Spring, 2004, pp39-42.

The Bargain. Charlottetown, Ragweed Press, 1997. ISBN 0-921556-67-5.

"Cude delves into themes such as forbidden love, illness and death, yet there is an overall sweetness to the writing found in other works such as Alcott's Little Women or even in Montgomery's Anne of Green Gables. Like these authors, Cude manages to avoid sugar-coated sentimentality, while maintaining lyrical descriptions of people and places."
     - from "Striking a bargain." Atlantic Books Today, Spring 1998.

"A Green Reading of Black Robe," The Nashwaak Review Number 8 Summer, 2000, pp.87-93.

"Nightmare in the Country of Dreams," a review article on Elisabeth Harvor's Let Me Be the One, The Antigonish Review, Spring, 1997, pp. 61-4.

"A Strange [And Truly Canadian] Love Story," a review article on Mordecai Richler's Barney's Version, The Antigonish Review, Winter, 1998, pp. 45-8.

"First April Morning," POETRY WLU, Spring, 1995, p.11.

"Spring Rain," The Lyric, Fall, 1992, p.27.

"Breath of the Mountain," CSPG Reservoir, July/August, 1992, p.23.

A series of Geofacts information handouts, published by the N.S. Department of Natural Resources, 1993: Salt in Nova Scotia, Industrial Minerals in Nova Scotia, Gypsum in Nova Scotia, Anhydrite in Nova Scotia.

Selected List of Productions

"Meeting the Challenge," a fourteen-minute presentation, produced for Human Resources Development Canada, encouraging employers to hire persons with a disability.

The "Earth Touch" series, community programming centred on environmentally friendly lifestyles.

Awards

Shortlisted for the 1997 City of Dartmouth Book Award, fiction category.
Third place in the 1996 Atlantic Writing Competition, novel category, Writers' Federation of Nova Scotia.
Falconbridge Bursary from 1990-94.
1992 Student Industry Field Trip (Calgary).
APICS Award.
NSERC Undergraduate Student Research Award.
Geological Association of Canada Student Prize.
St. Francis Xavier University Scholarship.

You can send mail to Mary Pat Cude
c/o Writers' Federation of Nova Scotia