Sudbury author draws inspiration from her family history for first novel, The Donoghue Girl

In her first novel, Sudbury, Ont., author Kim Fahner takes inspiration from her family's history, setting her story in the now-abandoned mining town of Creighton in the late 1930s.

The Donoghue Girl follows Lizzie Donoghue, the daughter of Irish immigrants who desperately wants more out of life than what a small northern Ontario mining town can offer her. She believes a young man named Michael Power could be her way out, but learns that might have been a mistake.

Fahner says all the characters in her book are fictional, but the setting is based on stories she heard from her older relatives about the town of Creighton.

"I grew up surrounded by my grandmother and my great aunts, and they always spoke of Creighton," she said. "They grew up there and it was with fond memories."

In the book, the Donoghues run a general store, just like her great grandfather did.

"My great grandfather was the first recorded merchant in Creighton in 1908, James Cornelius Kelly," Fahner said. "So instead of the Kellys, it's the Donoghues."

The book also references the Winter War between Finland and the Soviet Union, which started in late November 1939 and ended in March 1940.

"I worked with the local history librarian at the library here in town," Fahner said. "She was extremely helpful and I researched my head off."

While The Donoghue Girl is Fahner's first novel, she's published five books of poetry and was Sudbury's poet laureate from 2016 to 2018.

She describes her prose in the novel as poetic.

"There's no way out of it because for me, poetry is like breathing," she said.

The Donoghue Girl is published by Sudbury-based Latitude 46, which is focused on supporting writers with a connection to northern Ontario.