Three Reviews: Soulworm by Edward Willet; Releasing Your Need to Please: Escaping Romantic Relationships with Narcissistic Women by James Butler; and Get Your Footprints Out Of My Garden by K.J. Moss

"Soulworm "

by Edward Willett

Published by Shadowpaw Press Reprise

Review by Shelley A. Leedahl

$22.99  ISBN 978-1-989398-80-7

 

I missed it the first time, but what’s old is new again—Aurora Award-winning author Edward Willett’s YA fantasy novel, Soulworm, has been auspiciously re-released. What a treat to read the book that launched the prolific Regina writer’s impressive career in 1997, especially as I’ve so enjoyed his subsequent books. And prolific is an understatement: the heralded author, publisher, podcaster, actor and singer has written more than sixty books, including science fiction and nonfiction titles.

The opening scene of Willett’s new and revised edition immediately pulled this reader in: it’s 1984, near Weyburn, SK, and seven paragraphs into the story, three teens are in a horrific car accident. After the “car rolled six times in a welter of mud and water, tortured metal, and breaking glass,” it landed upright, and, hauntingly, Van Halen was still “blasting, the thump of the bass like a club pounding the ground.” Exceptional writing. And that’s what one can expect from this seasoned writer, all the way through this adrenalin-charged tale.

The story’s simultaneously old-school otherworldly—complete with torches, a tower and drawbridge—and rooted in Earthly details. Sixteen-year-old Liothel is an “Acolyte” in female-only Wardfast Mykia. It’s 2967. She was orphaned as a baby and thus has never known a true, loving family, though she’s surrounded by other Acolytes, Warders (those who’ve Manifested their Talent(s) of “Detection” …. and/or “Exorcism”), “Sentinels” and her beloved chief tutor, aging Jara.

Liothel’s a late-bloomer: she wonders if she will ever Manifest a Talent, necessary for “[contributing] directly to Mykia’s most important work, the continuing battle against the soulworms.” The eponymous “evil” soulworms “live to eat and reproduce … they thrive on negative emotions … infiltrate their victims, influence their actions …. Feed, and grow; and then, when the time is right, in a paroxysm of physical violence, they spawn … and the cycle repeats.” Creator forbid one ever finds its way to “violent” Earth, the “parallel world,” through the hole that’s “hidden, guarded, and watched,” because it would thrive in the here and now. Lionel’s daily life is “unchanging,” apart from witnessing the odd exorcism, but soon there’s a new teenaged Acolyte (and new roommate) in Mykia. Before we return to Weyburn, we’re introduced to Kalia—and Liothel’s instantly wary of the battered refugee.  

Most of the story does take place in the “real” world. I won’t reveal the connection, but will tell you that on Earth, accident survivors and former best friends Maribeth and Christine are no longer themselves. After waking from a two-month coma, Maribeth suffers “moments of oddness,” and the television “[makes] her pulse race.” Christine’s flipped her proverbial lid, and heads up a new gang called the “Ice Devils.” Fortunately, new student Adam, becomes Maribeth’s ally … and more.

Willett’s rich imagination and his almost magical ability to create stories that simultaneously straddle the world we know—fluorescent lights, football, and all— and the unique one he authentically creates is the reason he’s gained so many fans, and I am surely among them.          

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

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“Releasing Your Need To Please: Escaping Romantic Relationships with Narcissistic Women”

Written by James Butler

Published by Wood Dragon Books

Review by Shelley A. Leedahl

$21.99 ISBN 9-781990-863301

 

I wanted to review Releasing Your Need To Please: Escaping Romantic Relationships with Narcissistic Women because of the premise. It’s unusual, in my experience, to read about female narcissism, but Saskatoon counsellor and author James Butler writes that there’s a “growing phenomenon of women who perpetuate narcissistic abuse.” The men they’re in relationship with are the “pleasers,” and Butler says the only way for a pleaser to live a happy, healthy life is to leave the narcissistic relationship. “If … you are looking for help to escape your toxic relationship, this book is definitely for you,” the disclaimer states. The self-help book’s purpose is “to offer information about how to get out of unfixable, unsustainable, dangerous relationships.” Pleasers must break the “never-ending cycle” of “manipulation and accommodation,” once and for all, and Butler advises them to “lawyer up before [they] plan to escape.”  

It can be a “disease to please.” Narcissists and pleasers attract one another because of a deep need for love and acceptance that, Butler maintains, they didn’t get enough of as children. He speaks frequently of the “trauma bond”—“The connection created by the repetitive cycle of neediness and pleasing between a narcissist and a pleaser.” Pleasers continually repress their own thoughts, wants and needs to accommodate their partners’. Again, he points to child-parent relationships: “Since his emotional needs were rarely met, [the pleaser] did not learn that his feelings, wants, and needs mattered. In order to emotionally survive he had to please …”  A “desperate need for external validation” from one’s partner demonstrates an insecure attachment style.

Butler refrains from using the word “victim,” as he believes everyone has a choice to leave or stay. Choice equals power. It’s integral to “[get] honest with yourself,” however difficult that is, and to learn “the skills of disengagement and detachment.” Trusting one’s self is key.  

Doesn’t everyone know a narcissist and a pleaser? Narcissists feel “empty, lonely, powerless and needful,” Butler writes. Like pleasers, they have serious self-esteem issues. In relationship, they can be “irresponsible, controlling, volatile, manipulative, and unstable.” Pleasers are “adept at rationalizing the abusive relationship …. in order to repress deep trauma and fears of confronting the perceived pain of separation.” They “normalize” their mate’s control over them, blame themselves, and often believe that if they remain agreeable, she will change.

I feel it’s fair to say that many people believe that even a toxic relationship—rife with “confusion, anxiety, self-doubt, defeat, worthlessness, mental anguish, panic attacks, and loss of identity”—is better than being alone, so they continue to repress themselves rather than doing the hard work (including the “legitimate suffering of grief”) necessary to “escape the hell that has become their comfort zone.” Fear of abandonment is huge, and it ruins lives.  

I appreciated the occasional anecdotes in this thought-provoking text, and learned that “turning the mirror around” is an important step in regaining one’s power. Why? Because “Creating happiness and love is an inside job.” Sage advice from an inspiring, experienced professional.   

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

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“Get Your Footprints Out of My Garden”

Written by K.J. Moss

Published by Wood Dragon Books

Review by Shelley A. Leedahl

$19.99 ISBN 9-781990-863509

 

Poetry can sometimes be obscure and leave readers feeling that they just don’t “get” the work, and thus, they’re unable to connect with it. No one could accuse Moose Jaw resident Karran Moss, a longtime Registered Massage Therapist and new poet, of writing ambiguous work: the poems in her fifty-piece collection, Get Your Footprints Out Of My Garden, are clear-eyed, plain-spoken and easily understandable.

Moss explains in her introduction that at age twelve, during a Grade Seven school trip, she was “trapped in an elevator with a predator.” Further trauma occurred when a “well-meaning group of people” tried “to ‘pray’ the trauma out of [her],” which served only to exacerbate her PTSD: “religion became a trauma trigger,” she writes, and this collection is her “journey of growth and healing.” During therapy, “these poems started flying out of [her] soul.” As she continued working on her diagnosed c-PTSD (Complex Post Traumatic Stress Disorder) with a psychologist, the healing began. The tone and “frenzy” of the poems changed, and her “life started to make sense.”

The vulnerable and hopeful meditations are organized into three sections, “Trauma,” “Healing,” and “Living,” and of these, I found the poems in the “Trauma” section the strongest. Here the poet speaks to her inner child, and the first poem begins with the effective line: “And just like that my world crumbles.” She outlines the transformation in her personality after the elevator incident, and over the course of the poem she self-talks her way toward peace and health. “You are a powerful beautiful soul,” she writes, and “You can manage this life. Find the light.” In the next poem her anger is evident. Of her abuser, she writes “You suck the life out of kids.” She says: “The rats and the serpents/can feast on you,” and she calls him “Festering puss.”

Too many girls have to live with the devastating effects of childhood sexual abuse, and among the saddest outcomes is that they’re robbed of childhood joy. In “Dear 12-Year-Old Self,” Moss begins: “Dear little brown-eyed girl./I lost you” and assures her inner child that she is “A caged animal about to have a new life.” A happy life. Sensory pleasures—ie: “subtle shifts in the wind—represent newfound joy, and a mind’s “Full of little listens.”

Another consequence of trauma is difficulty with interpersonal relationships, and Moss examines this in poems that reveal that though she “push[es] people away,” she doesn’t “want anyone to go.” A kind of exorcism of negative thoughts, habits and relationships is unveiled. A twenty-year marriage is examined, a stalker addressed. A healthier woman emerges.

The puzzle of putting herself back together is a challenge, but the poet is “so close to putting it all together.” Through stillness, deep breathing, therapy and writing, Moss survives and is on her way to thriving. Once “a lifeless broken glass” that was “not capable of holding any form,” the poet learns that her “authentic self is a masterpiece,” and as readers, we can celebrate with her.

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

 

 

Three Book Reviews: The Wind and Amanda's Cello by Alison Lohans; The Glass Lodge by John Brady McDonald; and Restorig Relations Through Stories by Renae Watchman

“The Wind and Amanda’s Cello”

Written by Alison Lohans, Illustrated by Sarah Shortliffe

Published by Shadowpaw Press

Review by Shelley A. Leedahl

$23.99  ISBN 978-1-998273-15-7

  

It’s been such fun watching Regina author (and musician) Alison Lohans successfully focus her literary talents in so many different directions. The well-known multi-genre author has just released her 31^st book, and it’s a standout among the many children’s books that cross my desk each year.

Firstly, Lohans knows how to tell a story—whether it’s a novel for young adults, an early-reader chapter book or an illustrated children’s book like her recent release, The Wind and Amanda’s Cello—and it begins with language. In the opening spread of this colourful softcover, we read that “the wind grew restless.” Personification is effective in all writing, but perhaps particularly so when a writer’s engaging young readers. Sound is the most critical element in this book, and Lohans writes about it like she’s making it—a conductor directing an orchestra. We hear that life-like wind as it “whooshed by cars on the highway; it rattled gates and scattered old leaves on the sidewalk.” Note how the author uses specific details—another hallmark of quality writing.

The wind is indeed a powerful character in this story, and it finds its way into young Amanda’s cello, where it “whistled between the strings” and into “the dark inside of Amanda’s cello, where it hummed as Amanda played.” The girl immediately knows that “Something strange is going on,” and, as if also affected by the wind’s magic, her cat makes its own music as it “walked across the [piano] keys.” The girl and her pet play a sweet duet, but that doesn’t stop Amanda’s mother (or Amanda’s father) from telling Amanda that she mustn’t “forget [her] scales.” I admire the realism.

Others are also positively affected by Amanda’s humming cello—her orchestra mates, the paperboy, and neighbour Luke Garcia who “worked on his motorcycle in the driveway next door” and “forgot to turn on his radio when Amanda was playing her cello.” Time moves along in this delightful story, and when a baby girl joins the family, Amanda’s wind-swirled cello soothes the infant and helps her sleep.

As Amanda ages, music teachers insist that she’s outgrowing the cello and she tries several new ones, but, yikes, “not a single one of them hummed.”

The book’s also a treasure because of the lovely watercolour illustrations provided by Sarah Shortliffe. There’s a profound difference between books commercially “illustrated” via computer (the wide-eyed characters in many of these books look the same) and books in which a human has drawn or painted unique images that truly reflect the author’s words and the emotions the story evokes. Shortliffe’s images reveal details, like the painted lines on the grey highway crawling through green hills, the fold on the sheet music the wind’s caressing on the piano, and the brown waves beneath Amanda’s toque as she plays for her baby sister.

This book succeeds for the reasons above, but also—and especially—because Lohans has managed to capture the love Amanda has for her cello, and the cello’s reciprocal love for her. 

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

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“The Glass Lodge: 20^th Anniversary Edition”

By John Brady McDonald

Published by Shadowpaw Press Reprise

Review by Shelley A. Leedahl

$34.99  ISBN 9-781998-273119

 

As the name suggests, Shadowpaw Press Reprise is in the business of publishing previously-released books, often with edits and other improvements. The Glass Lodge: 20^th Anniversary Edition, a holds-no-punches poetry collection by Saskatchewan writer John Brady McDonald is one such book. First published in 2004 by Kegedonce Press, the Néhiyawak-Métis writer/artist/actor/musician/

historian—yes, he has a lot going on—from Muskeg Lake Cree Nation and the Mistawasis Nehiyawak has given the new hardcover edition a spit-shine, with “frank, fascinating insight[s]” into the poems’ angsty geneses, and several images of the initial handwritten pieces.        

McDonald’s been recognized for both his writing and artwork. His nonfiction book Carrying it Forward: ESSAYS FROM KISTAHPINÂNIHK garnered two Saskatchewan Books Awards in 2024, and his art’s been shown internationally. This multi-talented, Queen’s Platinum Jubilee Medal awardee (Saskatchewan), has had an extraordinarily diverse life, ranging from promiscuity and addiction issues to studying at England’s University of Cambridge and presenting his work in Australia.

 The book’s told chronologically in four parts—“Emergence,” “Eros,” “Kuskitew Peyesis” and “Renaissance,” and includes a “Denouement.” The poems reach back to McDonald’s difficult teenage years: the first poem in the book was written “in [his] math book, after [he] got in a fight with a white kid at school” and “snapped.” In the second piece, “Carpe,” he writes “My mind is a Latin Mass/chanting to be released” and, in the note below, he reveals that this short piece “was written in black marker on the liner notes of a Metallica cassette.”

Musical influences abound: Nirvana, Jim Morrison (McDonald’s “spiritual mentor”), and the poet’s favourite band, Guns N’ Roses. Of the latter, he confesses that their “music and lyrics were angry enough to serve as an equal frame against which to measure my own.”

This is not your grandmother’s poetry; violence is definitely a theme here, including gang violence. In “Colours,” about being “jumped-in” to a gang, we read  “Fists and feet pummel me/blood springs from my lips/again and again/The pain, the chain/across my back.” Writing authentically about street experiences like this would have an impact on young readers, and I’m not surprised that McDonald’s been a popular presenter. 

One of my favourite lines is “On this snow-covered concrete,/I ate from a garbage can/and am better for it” (“St. George of the Road Allowance”), and his description of a river as a “frozen snake of water” also stands out. 

The free verse poems are formally centred on the page. At one point the author admits that the poems in the “Eros” section “make [him] cringe in embarrassment” re: their romanticism, and we see this in melodramatic phrases like “my soul cries out,” and “Forbidden love is ours,” but good on McDonald for baring that young, love-tortured soul. I maintain that nobody has an “easy” life, but some suffer more than others. McDonald, fortunately, wrote his way toward a healthy lifestyle. “Words were my life-saving medium,” he says, and he proves through his “renaissance” that he is “so much more than a well-read Indian.”

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

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“Restoring Relations Through Stories: From Dinétah to Denendeh

Written by Renae Watchman

Published by University of Regina Press

Review by Shelley A. Leedahl

$35.95  ISBN 9-781779-400031

   

The striking cover photo of Renae Watchman’s Restoring Relations Through Stories: From Dinétah to Denendeh features green aurora borealis dancing above the natural monolith Tsé Bit’a’í (the Rock with Wings), Watchman’s “maternal family’s hometown landmark” on Navajo Land near Shiprock, New Mexico. In her new book, the Diné author and associate professor in Indigenous Studies at McMaster University (Indigenous Literatures and Film) frequently addresses the “sentinal’s” cultural importance to the Diné (Navajo), and she discusses ties she discovered between the American Diné and the Dene people north of “the medicine line” in Canada.

The scholarly text examines traditional stories by Diné and Dene storytellers, writers and filmmakers and explains their significance. Watchman advocates for “the recognition of hane’ [story, narrative, wisdom] in oral, literary, and visual formats (spoken, published, directed, and beaded) to demonstrate “Hózhǫ́,” an important Diné precept that encompasses beauty, order, harmony, and the idea of striving for a balanced life. The tragic effect of COVID-19 on the Diné; ceremonies; beadwork; and “pretendians” are also some of what’s covered.

 Watchman introduces herself by acknowledging her Clan relations, as is the Diné custom. She explains that in 2011 she met members of the Tsuut’ina First Nation, a Dene community in Alberta, and, though the nations are now “geographically, culturally, politically and economically distinct,” through sharing stories, she learned of their “kinscapes.” The Dene she visited recommended she “include their stories in [her] book,” and she has done so in this literary journey that “encourage[s] reading for restoration,” and “demonstrate[s] the narrative arc of restoration and restorying of relations.” Again, out of respect on her “story-gathering journey,” she “only shares[s] oral stories that have been previously published.”   

The author’s chosen not to italicize Diné bizaad (the Diné language) words in her five-chapter book; it’s an act of “decolonization,” she writes, and quotes an online article which proports that italicizing every word apart from English “̒only serves to set them apart as exotic, deviant or as part of a particular colonizing anthropological project.’” (A sound argument, and the reason I’m also not italicizing other-than-English in this review.)

The photographic Shiprock pinnacle has appeared in “at least twenty-eight documentaries and motion pictures,” Watchman writes, including a Disney feature film, John Carter. The scholarly writer discusses both non-Diné and Diné productions shot in the area, and argues that “non-Diné storytelling erases, replaces, and displaces.” When the Tsé Bit’a’í image is appropriated for items like “postcards … billboards, mastheads, and coffee mugs,” and used in films without Diné context, this “ironically contributes to her epistemic erasure.”

Watchman says it’s not the presence of Indigenous actors in a film that deems it Indigenous, rather  “indigenous agency as a creative behind the camera” make it so. I appreciated her analyses of Diné filmmaker Sydney Freeland’s Drunktown’s Finest and Diné Larry Blackhorse Lowe’s 5^th World, and while I wasn’t able to access the full films, I found scenes and interviews via Youtube that heightened my appreciation for both the films and for Watchman’s well-researched and well-written treatise.

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