Two Reviews: The Ghosts of Spiritwood by Martine Noël-Maw and Wounded Hearts Take a Chance by Debbie Quigley

“The Ghosts of Spiritwood”

By Martine Noël-Maw

Published by Shadowpaw Press Reprise

Review by Shelley A. Leedahl

$17.99  ISBN 978-1-989398-62-3

 

I’ve always loved a good ghost story, and Saskatchewan writer Martine Noël-Maw gives us ghost stories inside a ghost story in her YA novel The Ghosts of Spiritwood. First published in 2010 in French, the book’s now available in English thanks to Shadowpaw Press Reprise, and I’m so pleased. The novel was inspired by Grade 8 French Immersion students at Elsie Mironuck School in Regina, where Noël-Maw conducted six writing workshops.

The author’s work’s been recognized with two Saskatchewan Book Awards, and clearly knows how to write well, beginning with this novel’s opening paragraph:

“I still have nightmares about the events that took place in that abandoned country school near Spiritwood. I’d seen disembodied spirits before but never like those.”

That’s a grabber. We immediately learn that our First Person narrator is seventeen-year-old Ethan, the son of a Regina psychologist. She gave him the exercise of writing about a traumatic experience earlier that year because, as he says, “it should do me good”. Ethan and his classmates were to go camping in Spiritwood where they’d “watch the northern lights,” but rather than taking the bus with the others, Ethan and twins John and Reggie, plus Ethan’s crush Alex(andra) and whiny Britney had to leave the city late and were driving up in Ethan’s “recently-inherited” car. “It was my mom’s old car, a twelve-year-old four-door Corolla,” he writes.

The group made the five-hour trip to Spiritwood and beyond, but when a deer crossed before them and their car unceremoniously flipped (no injuries), the teens began walking and more bad news struck: a prairie thunderstorm broke around them, and true-to-life: no cell coverage. “̒̒We have to find shelter,’” [Ethan] said. “̒Or at least get off the road if we don’t want to get hit by lightning.’”

They take shelter in an abandoned country school near Spiritwood, and shortly after the oft-quarrelling fivesome begin sharing ghost stories, ie: Alex’s tale about her grandfather, who “‘came to say goodbye … the night he died,’” and Ethan’s story: “‘Shortly after [Granny’s] passing, I began seeing a shadow on my bedroom wall at the foot of my bed.’” This “shadow” appeared to him for the next ten years.

But those ghosts are not the ghosts of the book’s title. When the northern lights appear “like gigantic sails hanging in the deep blackness,” Ethan whistles (he found a special whistle for this purpose at the Wanuskewin gift shop) and sets Aurora Borealis dancing. Then: all hell breaks loose. I suggest reading this fast-paced, dialogue-rich story yourself to discover who these kids uncovered in the schoolhouse basement that night.

Despite the seriousness of the plot, the text is underscored with adolescent humour and sparring. Likeable Ethan’s strong, credible voice carries the story. There’s an interesting conversation re: perception, prayer, and the power of the mind, and I appreciated how the narrator often reflected on the incredulity of his own experience, ie: “I can’t believe I’m telling a story like this.” This book’s spooky … in all the best ways.

THIS BOOK IS AVAILABLE AT YOUR LOCAL BOOKSTORE OR FROM THE SASKATCHEWAN PUBLISHERS GROUP WWW.SKBOOKS.COM

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“Wounded Hearts Take a Chance"

by Debbie Quigley

Published by Endless Sky Books

Review by Shelley A. Leedahl

$9.99  ISBN 978-1-989398-72-2

   

Wounded Hearts Take A Chance is an attractive book with a positive message: women can recover from intense heartbreak and love again. Written by Debbie Quigley, a “retired healthcare worker” who writes “simple and real” poetry in what she calls her “whisper-art form,” this 28-page softcover is a poetic self-help read for those “whose wounded hearts have been shattered into pieces, those who are afraid to take a chance on loving another man”.

Across pages topped with light floral graphics, Quigley unfolds the narrative of a woman who has been “Keeping walls around her heart” and “Drying her own tears,” but, she writes, “Gazing at the stars at night” and “Holding a warm hand” are what “We all want,” and she encourages the reader to “Let someone in [their] life!”.

The thirteen free verse poems are ordered chronologically as a new relationship blossoms, beginning with a “first-glance attraction” that results in a dinner date. After this, “Exhilarated excitement enters her focus/Words of trust being built/Each word a brick of trust/Bringing her to the point of slowly tearing down the walls/around her heart”. Once one has “[Packed] away the luggage of the past,” she is able to “Write the next chapters in [her] life”.

The strongest piece in this slim book is “Walk in the Woods,” as it contains several concrete images, sensory details, a simile and a metaphor. In these woods “Trees the size of skyscrapers touch the sky” and the tails of the accompanying dogs wave “like flags in the air”. We hear the twigs snap “as each footstep was taken,” and see that “Mushrooms of all hues added colour bright/To nature’s browns on the deep-woods floor”. Poetry is all in the details.

The author places high value on the humble act of holding hands. In her poem “Hand to Hold,” she writes about holding her father’s hand as a child, “A hand of safety”. Throughout the years, if we’re lucky, we hold numerous hands, but “Many of us wait a lifetime for that special hand”.

It would seem that Debbie Quigley has indeed found “that special hand,” and the joy in that has resulted in this, her second book. Wind Whispers, her first collection of poetry, is available on Amazon. If you’d like to read more work by this Ontario author - who “lives in a small hamlet surrounded by nature and wildlife” - her poetry also appears on Author’s Den and in Spiritual Writers Network publications.

Wounded Hearts Take A Chance was published by Endless Sky Books, founded by Regina author Edward Willett. Endless Sky Books “is an eclectic hybrid publisher of all kinds of books, from children’s books to poetry to fiction to nonfiction”. To learn more about Endless Sky Books – and perhaps learn how you can turn your own experiences into published poetry – see endless-sky-books.com.

Reading Quigley’s book of gentle poems is like having a friend assure you that despite your sorrow, if you can open your heart to love again, everything will be fine.

THIS BOOK IS AVAILABLE AT YOUR LOCAL BOOKSTORE OR FROM WWW.SKBOOKS.COM