This book recounts 32 individual stories of Jockie Loomer-Kruger’s growing up years at the head of Nova Scotia’s Annapolis Valley, in the apple-growing community of Falmouth.
Told with candor, sensitivity, and humor, the stories are sad, poignant, and laugh-out-loud funny. Each story is illustrated by the author in a folk-art style that colorfully evokes a feeling of childhood.
With the assistance of a grant from the Region of Waterloo Arts Fund, Jockie Loomer-Kruger published her first book, which she also illustrated. “Valley Child – A Memoir” brings her full circle back to her growing-up years in Falmouth and her love of both writing and art.
Jockie was born in Windsor, N.S. and grew up across the river, in Falmouth. Always attuned to creativity, she loved to write, and draw. When her children were young she wrote participation theatre for child audience. Her eight plays were produced, mostly in Truro, but also in Charlottetown, and Saskatoon, and also by Mermaid Theatre. As the years went on her short stories, articles and poems appeared in small publications. In more recent years her work has been published online in Homemakers magazine, in a couple of poetry anthologies, Folklore Magazine in Saskatchewan, and in the Globe and Mail.
Her foray into the world of folk art began twenty five years ago, and her work is in collections all across North America. It is also in the collection of the Acadia University Art Gallery. Her painted stairs, in the home she and her husband Herb Kruger occupied from 1985 -1995 still exist and depict the community of Falmouth as she remembered it when she was nine.
Jockie raised three children, and has two grandchildren. For a number of years she was a nursery school teacher, a bookkeeper, a florist (a founding partner of Buds and Bygones in Wolfville) and also ran an antiques and collectibles shop out of her Falmouth home before starting her life as a folk artist.
