Publication Date: September 15, 2026
“The first thing you need to know: They’re not antiques.
The second thing you need to know: I’m not his daughter.”
Abandoned first by her father, and then by her mother, Frankie has been left in the care of her deeply religious grandmother. When her grandmother’s religious convictions tip into delusion, Frankie decides to run away.
Life on the street in Toronto is hard, and with winter coming, it gets tougher. This is when Frankie first meets Francis, a man old enough to be her father. He starts training her in “the game,” as she comes to call it; buying, stealing, and reselling “inventory” at inflated prices. Through winter, spring, and early summer, the two become a team, traveling around small towns and villages in southern Ontario.
As Frankie discovers, life on the road holds dangers she can’t anticipate, and her precarious world tips into disaster when Francis abandons her in an unfamiliar town. Betrayed, alone, and deserted, Frankie realizes she’s in a dangerous situation — will she be able to find her way out on her own?
The Antique Picker’s Daughter explores youth homelessness, human trafficking, and one young woman’s search for safety.
At 15, a young woman finds herself on the streets of Toronto, where help comes from an unlikely source.
Told in first person, The Antique Picker’s Daughter by Melanie Dugan offers a story of a family created by circumstance.
At the center is a man named Francis Person who rescues the girl from danger. Renamed Frances (aka Frankie) Person, she agrees to travel with the man old enough to be her father as he searches for treasures to resell.
The story takes a twist when young Frankie realizes the tricks of the trade center around stealing, which even she knows is wrong.
What happens, though, when her only lifeline proves to be hiding dangerous secrets? Frankie must find answers in order to make sense of what is happening around her.
The Antique Picker’s Daughter serves up a tale that highlights the intricate search for treasures while balancing a morally gray code of ethics.
Melanie Dugan is the author of Sometime Daughter (“A stunning debut,” The Kingston Whig-Standard), Revising Romance (“…heartwarming, amusing, and…downright sexy,” Midwestern Book Review), Dead Beautiful (“Artful and funny,” Kathryn Kuitenbrouwer), Bee Summers (“…a carefully wrought portrayal of the way we carry trauma with us through life,” Brenda Schmidt, Quill & Quire), and Hard White (“It is a very compelling and beautifully-crafted story…I highly recommend it,” Skeleton Press).
She lived in Boston, Toronto and London, England, before settling in Kingston, Ontario, where she now lives.
She has worked in libraries and bookstores, and was Associate Publisher at Quarry Press in Kingston, and also served as Managing Editor for Poetry Canada, Quarry Magazine and Canadian Fiction Magazine.
In 2009 she was promotions director for the inaugural Kingston WritersFest.
She has studied writing with Leon Rooke, Keath Fraser, Kim Moritsugu, Helen Humphreys and Anita Rau Badami.
Her short stories have been shortlisted for several awards including the CBC Literary Award.
