Written by Elaine Cust:
- “Back-to-work Mothers” in Our Family, March 1979.
- “Second Time Around” in Our Family, January 1981.
- Confession – a short story about a young girl who finds herself trapped in a moral conflict that can only be laid to rest by her skirting the truth. Broadcast on Alberta Anthology on CBC Radio (740). November 19, 1979.
The articles and the short story above were written when I was at home with my girls, cooking, cleaning, looking after them and finishing my B. Ed. degree.
- “Thinking for the Future: Strategies for Teaching Metacognitive Behaviour” with Sheila Spence in Emergency Librarian, May-June 1990.
- Focus on Research. A Guide to Developing Students’ Research Skills with Duncan Anderson. A monograph published by the Curriculum Support Branch of Alberta Education, 1990.
These academic pieces were written during my thirty years of teaching. I was busy putting my creative self to work in the classroom and the school library.
- On His Own Two Feet. The Life of Harold Granger – a biography about an ordinary man who has lived an extraordinary life. November 2009.
Thanks to the generous consent and participation of Harold Granger and Audrey Verbeek Granger, I was able to complete my first full length piece of writing.
- From Irish Roots…The Descendants of James Cust and Rose Allen Cust – a compilation of Cust family stories spanning the 20th Century. November 2012.
Again, the generous participation of others helped to make this collection of family stories and photos a success.
- Here There Be Dragons – the story of two women, Margaret Jones and her sister, Euphemia Jones who grow up together in a close-knit family and community in Yorkshire in the 1600s. Margaret, the eighth great-grandmother of the author, marries Henry Cust. and they move their family to Ireland, leaving Euphaemia behind in Yorkshire. The sisters never see each other again. Yet there is an unbreakable empathic bond between Euphaemia – storyteller and healer– and Margaret – wife of Henry and mother of eight. November 2017.
I spent four years researching the historical details of the plantation and what life was like in the 1600s for ordinary English women and men. Based on the genealogical information of the Cust family, this novel, though it is based on fact, also includes a generous dose of imagination.