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Collective Souls
What if the path to healing your past begins with accepting your child for who they truly are?
Collective Souls is a powerful, fictionalized account of four women learning to reclaim their voices. Set in rural 1980s Canada, the story unfolds through interwoven narratives of the women as girls, grappling with poverty, displacement, and generational trauma—setting the stage for who they will become as mothers.
Each protagonist—fierce, flawed, and mother to an LGBTQ+ child—wrestles with where she within her family, her community, and most of all, herself. All are determined to protect their children, even if it means facing truths that they have buried deep. This is a novel about motherhood as advocacy, about parenting not from perfection but from the desire to heal what you never had. It’s about the shift from silent shame to finding your voice, from survival to agency.
With tenderness and grit, Collective Souls invites you into these women’s kitchens, barns, bars, and backroads—and into the hearts of women learning, at last, to belong to themselves.
Collective Souls is a powerful, fictionalized account of four women learning to reclaim their voices. Set in rural 1980s Canada, the story unfolds through interwoven narratives of the women as girls, grappling with poverty, displacement, and generational trauma—setting the stage for who they will become as mothers.
Each protagonist—fierce, flawed, and mother to an LGBTQ+ child—wrestles with where she within her family, her community, and most of all, herself. All are determined to protect their children, even if it means facing truths that they have buried deep. This is a novel about motherhood as advocacy, about parenting not from perfection but from the desire to heal what you never had. It’s about the shift from silent shame to finding your voice, from survival to agency.
With tenderness and grit, Collective Souls invites you into these women’s kitchens, barns, bars, and backroads—and into the hearts of women learning, at last, to belong to themselves.
249 pages, Kindle Edition
Published October 28, 2025
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
May 2, 2026
Oh my heart. This book is so heartbreaking and so beautiful. The way the author was able to highlight all the warm cozy memories from living in a small town while also showing how tightly woven these memories are with memories of some people’s ignorance and judgement. Brilliant.
I liked the timeline split. With the storylines from when the moms were children/teens to being mothers themselves. There’s so much to reflect on in relation to how our childhood affects everything we do as adults and how we parent ourselves.
It’s incredibly unfortunate that the burden of educating folks falls on the ones that are oppressed but if we all take a piece and speak up when we feel able, the burden is smaller then if we try to do it in our own. This book feels like one of these steps forward. Giving people some insight into what the families of LGBTQ children deal with every day could help get the conversation going and start the process of changing perspectives that are highly outdated and hurtful.
Now I really want to see a second book from the perspective of the kids!
I liked the timeline split. With the storylines from when the moms were children/teens to being mothers themselves. There’s so much to reflect on in relation to how our childhood affects everything we do as adults and how we parent ourselves.
It’s incredibly unfortunate that the burden of educating folks falls on the ones that are oppressed but if we all take a piece and speak up when we feel able, the burden is smaller then if we try to do it in our own. This book feels like one of these steps forward. Giving people some insight into what the families of LGBTQ children deal with every day could help get the conversation going and start the process of changing perspectives that are highly outdated and hurtful.
Now I really want to see a second book from the perspective of the kids!
December 27, 2025
A beautiful story of resilience, grit and determination to help their children thrive in such a difficult world to find love and acceptance. It’s all any mother wants. This world needs to realize we are all worthy of love in any form and that love is love. Thank you Joanne and all that contributed to this novel and I hope it will help open up conversations.
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews