‘If You Played in My Playground’ is a temporal experience. It hearkens back to a youth gone by but makes certain the reader is aware that this is Elizabeth’s playground. And with this comes a life you have not experienced until now when you walk alongside throughout her tumultuous story.

In Elizabeth’s debut novel her unique new voice tells the story of a Portuguese woman navigating the ghetto of Toronto. She trudges through ill-gotten neighborhoods with the knowledge that they are her own and carries a strong will through welfare, drug trafficking, a lost lover, and all forms of physical and sexual abuse. She becomes as hardened as the ones who wronged her; unable to clean the wounds she bore at such a tender age. She is unable to understand why the world has taken everything away from her including the one person who loved her unconditionally: Her Avo (grandmother). Slowly, she finds love incrementally through the birth and rearing of her son Keeno and is saved by God in the eyes of the church.

Elizabeth’s story imprints itself on you with its’ heartbreaking honesty and her remarkable ability to recall the details of her own coming of age. It is a story that needs to be told and a beacon for women and girls everywhere.

This is a memoir detailing her own life and reflects the extreme circumstances of violence and abuse she dealt with at a young age. This book was a cathartic and cleansing experience for her and a story she needs to tell the world.

It’s relevance spans Toronto and illuminates an underbelly Torontonians should be exposed to. It’s also a part of her request to create awareness for people (around the world) about the effects of emotional, physical and sexual abuse.

Elizabeth’s story cannot be missed. It’s a story you may think you’ve heard before but not in a voice as vibrant and strong as hers