Three New Reviews: Sadi's Dragons, by Beverley Brenna; Apron Apocalypse, by Jeanette Lynes; and Critters: Wandering Monsters, by Allan Dotson

“Sadi’s Dragons”

By Beverley Brenna

Published by Thistledown Press

Review by Shelley A. Leedahl

$16.95  ISBN 978-1-77187-296-6

   

Some authors always “deliver the goods” when it comes to arresting plots, compelling characters, and technical proficiency. Saskatchewan’s Beverley Brenna—a Governor General’s Literary Award nominee, author of numerous books for young people, professor emerita at the University of Saskatchewan’s College of Education, editor, and visual artist—is one of those consistently reliable writers, and her new middle years’ novel, Sadi’s Dragons, is another grand success. Brenna books are not only entertaining, they also feel important, and her latest is no exception.

The intergenerational novel deals with serious issues: poverty and the unhomed; a fatal boating accident (and the fallout for eleven-year-old protagonist, Sadi, and her struggling mother); dementia; abuse; and lies. It also positions storytelling, art-making and forging new friendships as integral to the characters’ healing. In short, this is no ordinary juvenile novel with goofy characters, puppy love and slapstick humour … it’s far more layered and impressive, and it credits young readers with having both the interest and the ability to digest more complex plots and realistic, contemporary issues.

We meet Sadi when she’s been alone for five days and living in a tent near a river while her mother has “gone back to the city.” Food is sometimes found in garbage cans, washing is done in the river or—as October’s blowing in—a shopping mall bathroom. We know that Sadi has buried a tragic secret and the imaginative young girl tries to keep it locked up in her “memory box.” Also, as a result of the boating accident that killed her beloved father and twin brother, she’s suffered a brain injury.

Sadi’s chapters alternate with those of Marguerite, a senior artist challenged by dementia. Never-married Marguerite lives quietly with her dog (whose name she can’t recall, and whom she sometimes forgets to feed). She hasn’t painted in a year, and her gallerist is pressuring her for new work. She has no friends, often naps out of boredom (“Because if she was sleeping, she didn’t have to think about anything”), and is so frustrated with her memory loss she’s been throwing items—including canvases and paint supplies—into her back yard.

Brenna skillfully sets tone with the increasingly poor weather, and by using the colour grey. The dog is “like a small grey shadow,” Marguerite’s room is grey, and a day is described as “grey.” Sadi thinks that the river looks “like a long silver dress,” and even though she has an acquired brain injury, she’s always pondering, and comes up with ideas like putting calculators on shopping carts so “you’d know just how much you were spending.”

As much as Sadi is trying not to remember, Marguerite is desperate to remember, and asks herself: “What if I forget who I am?” I won’t reveal how Brenna masterfully connects the girl and the artist—the former fearing foster care, the latter fearing a care home—or what dragons have to do with it. I  encourage you to buy the book, and enjoy finding out for yourself.

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

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“Apron Apocalypse”

Written by Jeanette Lynes

Published by Thistledown Press

Review by Shelley A. Leedahl

$24.95  ISBN 978-1-77187-294-2

 

I’ve previously admired Jeanette Lynes’ poetry and fiction, but with her latest book—Apron Apocalypse, an intimate yet highly-accessible collection of lyric essays—the Ontario-born, Saskatoon-based Lynes hoists an already high bar, and clears it. Lynes is well-known for her numerous books; as the Coordinator of the M.F.A. in Writing at the University of Saskatchewan; and for her wit and wardrobe. Her work—frequently surprising, tight, and always entertaining—has given her a national literary presence. Wikipedia page? Absolutely.   

Apron Apocalypse is smart, candid, stylish and illuminating—a book I’ll be recommending to anyone who loves the hybridity (poetic prose and real-life experience) of lyric essays, and will appreciate how Lynes has imaginatively harnessed her joys, failures and obsessions. She writes extensively about her failed marriage and “divorce trauma,” and self-forgiveness is a theme. She also examines—with linguistic precision—her rural upbringing (sans hot water); paintings (ie: Mary Pratt’s work), poetry (especially Elizabeth Bishop), music and movies (hurray for Sarah Polley!); aprons (she had a collection, but “Pretty aprons couldn’t rescue us all”); mental health; COVID’s toll; etymology (she makes it fun); her own height (“I’m the grain elevator to lots of folks’ woodsheds”) and physical features; and the many rooms, real and metaphorical, that’ve harboured her as she’s moved across the map.

Her prose is saturated with poetry. On the Isle of Mull, “decayed trunks shagged with moss form a sculpture gallery,” she writes, and in wintery Saskatoon, “sunlight will stroke in brief punches, bracing bouts of glare with windchill blasts that bitch-slap one’s cheekbones.” In her “marital house by the shore, a pretty/bungalow with pink siding,/the apron on its hook, hung, like a headless woman.” Lynes “wanted to be a writer more than a wife.” (Ditto.)

She addresses mental health head-on: her ex-husband “once dubbed [her] a sad clown,” and she walks us through campus to counselling sessions when her “inner darkness wails for help.” Of those eponymous aprons, Lynes asserts that rural women “sewed and sewed to stave off sorrow,” but it didn’t always work: a neighbour hung herself in the barn … “apron strings morph[ed] into lengths of rope.”

As a writer and professor, Lynes also writes about writing, and how “During the plague, [her] syntax took a beating. Prose barely clung to the page, kept peeling away from its margins.” She maligns “the hard c,” calling it her “least-loved sound,” and “never cared for the ellipsis,” though “suspect[s] it’s wrong, being prejudiced against certain elements of punctuation.”

One of the strongest essays is the tragicomedy “Sea Cow,” about trying to have a fun holiday in Florida while her “marriage [was] unravelling,” and her efforts “not to be a cow” on the disastrous vacation.

“A lot of one’s life is finding the words,” Lynes writes. For some, much of life is also about the act of forgiveness. “Forgiveness is tough for her,” Lynes contends in second person, “But she keeps trying, stabbing words onto the screen, pushing towards first-person voice. Closing in on her core.”

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

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“Critters: Wandering Monsters"

by Allan Dotson

Published by YNWP

Review by Shelley A. Leedahl

$29.95  ISBN 9-77869-066-2

  

Critters: Wandering Monsters, is another tour-de-force graphic novel by Regina writer, artist, game designer, and teacher, Allan Dotson, and it follows on the horns and tails of Critters: Underdark, a graphic novel shortlisted for a Saskatchewan Book Award.

The new 205-page epic “was born out of [Dotson’s] desire to become a better comics storyteller,” he explains. The story explores “three kinds of evil,” including “systemic evil,” described as an evil that encompasses “monsters raised for war, trained to see others as enemies, rewarded for cruelty, and taught to value gold and power above all else.” Dotson writes, “We don’t have to imagine that world. We live in it.” (One need only watch the news to confirm this.) But the book is also about friends who become family, adventure, and “choosing empathy over fear,” and there’s a good dose of humour across the busy pages, as well. 

There are no less than “13 locations, 21 characters and 5 shape change disguises,” in Dotson’s fantastical world, the first part of which is set in the subterranean landscape of black and white caves and cliffs, the second part on the green, brown, red and orange-hued “Surface,” where humans share the Dinosaur Valley, forests and mountains with elephants, monkeys, winged horses and a spiky-tailed, bat-winged lion-type-of-thing that preys on those very horses.

At the outset, a group of five distinctive and youthful monsters are in a cave when they’re suddenly attacked by “cat bats” that have “escaped from the medusa’s train and are on the run from the dwarves.” Of these five characters, the snake-haired female in a caped jumpsuit, Lena, and her insulting (“stupid hair”) semi-adversary—the snaggled-toothed, pointy-eared hag, Sally, aka Saliel—are almost human-looking. We learn that Lena’s mother is Dread Lady Linorm, a sword-and-arrow-carrying medusa who “sells little monsters at the wizards’ market.”

Child-like Eddy is white-furred with spidery legs and Cycloptic-ish eyes. He’s an “Ettercap,” and part of the book’s humour derives from his innocence and basic diction, ie: “Der is a balla fyre? Shood we be wurreed ‘bout dat?” At one point Eddy warns Lena not to “tok” to a spell-casting creature, not because he can “take over [their] minds or something,” but because he’s “jus’ super boring.” No one’s certain why shapeshifter Uriel is being punished, but it could be for “Coming home late,” “Talking out of turn,” or “Laughing at a funeral.” In another funny frame, Lena tells Saliel that she doesn’t “know any fighting spells,” but she does “know a spell to mend [her] cloths, and a spell to clean [her] clothes, and a spell to make [her] clothes smell nice.” Sarcastic Saliel responds: “No fighting spells? That’s stupid.”

Reading this tale is like wandering through a dreamscape. There are always new characters, and they might be shapeshifters, delvers, warriors, elves, medusa wizards, mages, or minotaurs (to name a few). I laughed when Saliel, in a metafiction moment, said “I can barely keep track of what I’m supposed to look like.” For more Dotson: maycontainmonkeys.com.

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

 

  

 

Three New Reviews: U Alive by Chelsea Coupal; Love Big Country: Tales of Wildfire, Wildlife & Wild Times by Mark Fletcher; and Another Leaf: A Refugee Story by Marg Epp, as Told by Ma They Yare

“U Alive”

By Chelsea Coupal

Published by Thistledown Press

Review by Shelley A. Leedahl

$19.95  ISBN 9781771872836

   

Chelsea Coupal’s second book, U Alive, is the most enjoyable poetry collection I’ve read in many moons. The rural Saskatchewan-raised writer and new mother documents—through sensorial and beautifully imagistic poems, mostly written in formal styles (couplets, tercets, quatrains)—a quintessentially prairie childhood; the transition from adolescence to motherhood; our often inexplicable attractions and attachments to people; the vagaries of the months and seasons; a close connection to the natural world; and a concern about the environment.

The book possesses a self-reflective, questioning tone. Each of the twelve sections begins with a stylized poem named for the months of the year. Coupal has split these calendar poems into two columns, and rather than reading straight across the horizontal lines, the poems are best read down the left column, then down the right. In “March,” Coupal contemplates breastfeeding (“The second week I get mastitis”) and philosophizes about her life: “I could have as much time ahead/as behind me, maybe less./I wonder if everything I’ve done/equals good or bad.” Her breast milk “is the colour of salmon,/dyed by [her] own blood.”  

There’s plenty of blood in these poems, ie: “Tongues wet/as blood or birth;” “Lady beetles in bleeding grass;” “blood-eyed ghosts;” “don’t trust anything that bleeds for a week/and doesn’t die;” and “blood on the sheets.” A rural Saskatchewan upbringing gives one a pragmatic perspective on death, I believe. It’s a place where one might see an eagle’s “white face red with the warm blood of a rabbit.”

Seasons are a focal point, too. In spring, “[March] lands/before rain, before geese, before seeding,/before tulips break through soil, wavy-green wings.” And in August, “Some nights the air is water/that surrounds a canoe.” How lovely. One teenaged September finds the narrator at a bush party: “We aren’t dressed/for the gentle sting of clear September night. A bonfire stains/the horizon” and partiers have “crop stubble stuck in [their] socks.”

In an environmental poem about taking a great-horned owl to a rescue, Coupal laments a prairie where “Every acre [is] maximized” and “chemical containers lie around.” The owl “Probably ate a mouse that ate rodenticide.”

I commend Coupal’s smart use of verbs: “birds flurry,” “snow shoots” and “rain swishes.” And who doesn’t appreciate a great moon metaphor? Coupal’s moon is a “pale thumbprint, creased and shadowed” and, in a particularly apropos comparison, it’s “a bullet hole/in the side of an old barn”.

The Saskatchewan Coupal portrays is the one I also experienced, from dancing “in cigarette smoke” to admiring the “wheat-husk whisper” of chickadees that land in retreating writers’ and artists’ upturned palms at St. Peter’s Abbey in Muenster, and coveting the “honey scent” of sweet peas (“Moths in watercolour”).

 Loss is omnipresent in these stunning poems. In “Same Basic Losses,” we find this truism:

      We wait for the same basic losses: death of our pets

      grandparents and then our parents. And when our loved ones die,

      we remember we’re animals.

Sensorial, sexy, and steeped in the “small astonishment/at being alive,” I’ll savour these poems—repeatedly.

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

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“Love Big Country: Tales of Wildfire, Wildlife & Wild Times”

By Mark Fletcher

Published by YNWP

Review by Shelley A. Leedahl

$29.95  ISBN 978-1-77869-047-1

 

At 398 pages, I harboured reservations about reviewing Love Big Country: Tales of Wildfire, Wildlife & Wild Times, a memoir conveyed in stories by Mark Fletcher. What if it was dull and/or poorly written? Then I began reading, and before I’d turned the first page, I was rapt, as Fletcher—wildland firefighter, smokejumper and adrenalin junkie extraordinaire—not only writes exceptionally well, this natural storyteller’s lifetime of intense experiences could make for blockbuster movies. He was in a helicopter that “flew directly through a residual cottonwood tree” and crashed. He’s shared rivers with grizzlies, was threatened by armed criminals, and, most terrifyingly, experienced burnovers: “fire penetrated the surrounding green fuels in a rush of flying embers, licking flames and loud, thick, wind-driven smoke. Burning trees fell close with muted thuds. The dragon was upon us.”

His “beloved profession … nearly killed [him] a number of times,” and he earned ten concussions in the 1980s. “Parachuting into forest fires and firefighting in general come with risks,” he asserts. “Everyone knows I push boundaries.” But there’s no braggadocio here: the author regularly credits his associates, from heavy equipment operators to birddog pilots.

More than half the book brims with harrowing tales from the front line (the “Wildfire” pieces). “Wildlife” and “Wild Times” sections follow, and each section provides “snapshots of [Fletcher’s] life,” which, he explains “has been about healthy relationships” with the “natural environment, with the wildlife that shares our planet” and with myriad people. What shines through: Fletcher was masterful at the career that brought him much joy, but work aside, he also comes across as an empath, an environmentalist, a feminist, and just an all-round nice guy.

A “Huck Finn-type” from the get-go, Fletcher’s career began in 1975, and in 1993 he became a certified air attack officer with the BC Forest Service, Wildland Fire. His entertaining anecdotes are filled with the language of the trade, ie: smokejumping, saw kits, ditty bags, snags, birddog flying, jumpspotting; a reverence for natural landscapes; stories about various characters and Fletcher’s three beloved “fire dogs”. Sid, a heeler, had “an international fan club” and once, after joining his owner on a “carnival ride” of an air tanker flight in the Kootenays, the author later found the dog on his hotel bed in Castlegar. Sid had laid on the channel changer and turned on the TV—he was watching The Littlest Hobo.

Aside from “literally brushing embers off” and meeting the likes of David Suzuki, John Denver, Buddhist monks (whose incense sticks and cones ignited a mammoth old growth cedar), Mexican firefighters (“Frying tortillas on hot spots with fixin’s was a tasty shared meal”), and using sign language to communicate with a Gwich’in-speaking woman who required ATV evacuation, there are wolf, wolverine, cougar, beaver, alligator and lynx stories. The most touching concerns Fletcher’s connection to a great horned owl at his southeast Saskatchewan farmstead, and the “owl medicine” she shared.

May this absolute firestorm of a book receive the readers and recognition it rightly deserves.

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

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“Another Leaf: A Refugee Story”

By Marg Epp as told by Ma They Yare

Published by YNWP

Review by Shelley A. Leedahl

$19.95  ISBN 978-1-77869-031-0

 

Ten years ago, while backpacking around Thailand, I visited a Karen village to photograph a woman with gold rings elongating her neck. I knew nothing of Karen culture and was shamelessly after the sheer spectacle. While that experience deserves to be in a “How Not to Be a Culturally Sensitive Traveler” file, it did have me especially eager to read Another Leaf: A Refugee Story, the memoir of a Myanmar-born Karen woman, Ma They Yare, as told, with the aid of translators, to her friend, Marg Epp. A small reparation, yes, but a step in the right direction.

Epp and her refugee sponsorship group at Wildwood Mennonite Church in Saskatoon were responsible, with assistance from the Mennonite Central Committee, for the immigration of single mother Ma They Yare and her five children to Saskatoon in 2016. Ma They Yare bravely fled war-ravaged Myanmar (formerly Burma) with her family, and they remained in Thailand’s Mae Ra Mu Luang refugee camp for fourteen years before their arrival in Canada (sans the children’s father), where everything—food, clothing, currency, weather, customs, language—was new and strange. Epp’s compassion for the immigrant experience was partially informed by her own family’s wartime escape from Europe to Canada.

The author explains that Ma They Yare “has spent much of her life searching in order that she and her family might live lives that are about more than just survival,” and a Karen proverb about a caterpillar continually and necessarily searching for “a new leaf” to eat “in order to survive and grow” is used as a metaphor. Epp writes: “Like the monarch butterfly [Ma They Yare] has crossed borders in search of safer habitats and has shown us that just living is not enough. There is more to life than mere survival.”

Unable to read or write herself, Ma They Yare stresses the importance of education for her children. Three of the five were born in the refugee camp, and Epp’s included touching letters they’ve penned to their mother in this fascinating story that puts a distinct face on the ongoing civil war in Myanmar (frequent and brutal attacks by the Burmese army on Karen villages continue today); details what life’s like in Thai refugee camps; and records the joys and struggles of integration into Canadian society. 

I get a strong sense of Ma They Yare’s strength, directness and hopefulness in her conversational, first-person accounts, from village life and running from Burmese soldiers in the jungle to “things happening to women that [she doesn’t] want to talk about” in the refugee camp, and being terrified in Canada by the house-rattling wind and the smoke alarm’s initial “deafening shriek.”

It was interesting to read about bamboo houses, dugout canoes, the custom of Karin women getting tattoos “all over [their] body” as protection against snake poison, and Ma They Yare’s “traditional Buddhist Marriage”. Actually, the entire, book was a welcome education for this reader. It’s a story the anti-immigrant faction of Canadian society would be well-advised to read.    

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

 

 

 

Two New Reviews: "Honouring the Declaration: Church Commitments to Reconciliation and the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples," edited by Don Schweitzer and Paul L. Gareau; and “On Settler Colonialism in Canada: Relations and Resistances” Edited by Emily Grafton and David B. A. MacDonald

 “Honouring the Declaration: Church Commitments to Reconciliation and the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples”

Edited by Don Schweitzer and Paul L. Gareau

Published by University of Regina Press

Review by Shelley A. Leedahl

$39.95  ISBN 9-780889-778320

 

 

Honouring the Declaration: Church Commitments to Reconciliation and the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP), a collection of diverse scholarly essays edited by Don Schweitzer (McDougald Professor of Theology at St. Andrew’s College, Saskatoon, and an ordained member of the United Church of Canada) and Paul L. Gareau (Métis associate professor in the Faculty of Native Studies at the University of Alberta) is aptly titled. Over ten chapters, the contributing Indigenous and non-Indigenous scholars and theologians examine the UNDRIP from many angles as it pertains to the United Church and other Christian denominations, and they weigh in on the Truth and Reconciliation Commission’s Calls to Action. In this gathering of learned minds, the contributors discuss what true reconciliation means, why it’s integral, steps to achieving it, and some of the challenges facing reconciliation.

In her lived-experience essay “Restructured Feelings: Pitfalls of Settler-Christian Turns to Education,” Lynn Caldwell questions education’s role in non-Indigenous and Indigenous relations, making “an argument against overstating what education about difference, about injustice and oppression, or about reconciliation and justice can achieve.” The former longtime faculty member at St. Andrew’s College contends that “settler-Christian education” is “preliminary and foundational,” and she writes that the residential school system is an example of “̒education.’” Caldwell effectively uses an anatomy metaphor to make her point: “Learning about oppression, power, culture, whiteness, race, and privilege is [akin to] learning an anatomy … Such learning certainly can be a part of a path to health, but in and of itself the outcome of learning anatomy in the ways I am conceiving of it here, is just that—the knowledge of anatomy.” This knowledge is important, but as lawyer/educator Sa’ke’j Henderson and Don Schweitzer state in their Afterword, “reconciliation requires concrete structural change and material reparations.”

Henderson’s own chapter concerns “the principle of inherent human dignity,” which is critical because “[Indigenous Peoples] have suffered through constant and unabashed violations of [their] inherent dignity.” He cites “cognitive justice” as integral to transcending European knowledge systems and ensuring an “inclusive education and society” for Indigenous Peoples. “Seminaries should collaborate with Indigenous people in an evaluation of their ethos and their efforts at reform, and to avoid repeating the failures of the past,” he writes.

Biblical scholar Christine Mitchell queries the Old Testament commands of “colonization and extermination” and asks “How are the biblical conquest narratives applicable to my experience and the experience of other settler Canadians?” She contends that “we are called now more than ever to contextualize these texts as fantasies, and to resist any attempts to use them to justify an actuality.”

There’s much to learn and digest in these learned essays. As Christianity has been historically complicit in the oppression of Indigenous Peoples, it’s only fitting that “the Church” play a leading role in doing everything possible to right the wrongs. In adopting the Declaration as a framework for reconciliation, the United Church of Canada avows that “A new relationship is waiting, and we turn our faces towards it.”      

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

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“On Settler Colonialism in Canada: Relations and Resistances”

Edited by Emily Grafton and David B. A. MacDonald

Published by University of Regina Press

Review by Shelley A. Leedahl

$36.95  ISBN 9-781779-400680

 

 

In 2025, editors and political scientists Emily Grafton and David B. A. MacDonald released On Settler Colonialism in Canada: Lands and Peoples, which considered the 2015 Truth and Reconciliation Commission’s Final Report and its outcomes. They’ve now followed up with On Settler Colonialism in Canada: Relations and Resistances. This important new work consists of a “collection of conversations” which address the question: “What does meaning change look like amid ongoing settlerism and resulting inequalities and violence?”

Even the definition of colonialism is sometimes debated. Contributor Joyce Green—professor emerita of Political Science at the University of Regina and a citizen of the Ktunaxa Nation—explains that “At its core, colonialism is about profit acquired by stealing someone else’s land and resources while denying the sovereignty and humanity of those oppressed.”

Anishinaabe law scholar Leo Baskatawang points out that “treaties” have also had different interpretations. He writes that the Truth and Reconciliation Commission’s Final Report, which included ninety-four Calls to Action, has not been properly addressed: “The Government of Canada’s approach to dealing with the Calls to Action has been to itemize each one, as if it were a list of goods that can be bought at the supermarket and checked off as done.”

Heena B. Mistry writes about anti-Asian racism and posits that colonialism exercised a “’divide and rule’” strategy to “disrupt solidarity between racialized migrants and Indigenous communities.” She suggests that “efforts to address anti-Asian racism on campus must be in collaboration and solidarity with efforts to decolonize and Indigenize the campus.” Kurtis Boyer argues that education (about colonialism) is not enough, as it can lead to “resentment, and limitations of student engagement.” He writes “To truly achieve reconciliation, education must centre Indigenous ways of knowing, reflecting the diversity of Indigenous thought and practice, and offering relational approaches that foster deeper understanding and learning.”

I enjoyed Enakshi Dua and Elaine Coburn’s discussion on land acknowledgments, which Cree scholar Michelle Daigle has suggested “are more often part of a “̒spectacle of reconciliation’” that serves only to assuage “̒white guilt.’” Dua and Coburn  assert that “we must move from land acknowledgements to Land Back, raising questions about compensation and resources.”

On the prairies, treaty’s being honoured in the creation of the Treaty Land Sharing Network: “… mainly white settler farmers, ranchers and other landholders who have come together to offer safe land access for Indigenous Peoples to practise their ways of life in Treaty 4 and 6 areas of Saskatchewan and Alberta.” Co-authors Naomi Beingessner, Emily Eaton, and Martha Jane Robbins were “inspired by the oral histories and the growing awareness about Indigenous understandings of treaties,” and “[their] network attempts to practise their true spirit and intent.” 

Other acts of decolonization include orchestrating a home-birth (as opposed to a cold and racist hospital experience); the proposed creation of “a mandatory grade 11 course focused on Indigenous voices” in Toronto; and “the rise in Indigenous narratives in arts, literature, and media.” Promising, but it appears there’s still a long way to go.

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

 

 

 

Three New Reviews: "Stitching Our Stories Together: Journeys into Indigenous Social Work," edited by Jeannine Carrière and Catherine Richardson; “nēhiyawētān kīkināhk /Speaking Cree in the Home: A Beginner’s Guide for Families” by Belinda Daniels and Andrea Custer; and "The Haunted Horn" by Edward Willett

“Stitching Our Stories Together: Journeys into Indigenous Social Work”

Edited by Jeannine Carrière and Catherine Richardson

Published by University of Regina Press

Review by Shelley A. Leedahl

$34.95  ISBN 9-781779-400574

   

The stimulating essays in Stitching Our Stories Together: Journeys into Indigenous Social Work—edited by Métis scholars and thesis supervisors Jeannine Carrière and Catherine Richardson—reveal how nine Métis social work graduate students from across Canada are incorporating individual Indigeneity, histories and experiences, plus “Indigenous ways of knowing and being,” into their research in innovative ways, from using dance as a method to learn Michif to beading. The essays are disparate, imaginative, frank, and encouraging. 

The anthology includes an introduction and conclusion from the editors. They’ve chosen the culturally resonant metaphor of “stitches” in their title, as “Métis have stitched together blankets, quilts, fishing nets, and clothing[,] as well as mended relationships and kept families on track.” They hope the book will inspire “Indigenous undergrads who are contemplating entering a post-graduate program,” and that future students will find a few of “the possibilities offered by Indigenous research” in this handsome collection. The editors point to the importance of “meaning making … the process of how we take the gifts of participant interviews or other information to a level that adds to existing knowledge,” and in their roles as supervisors/mentors, they express a desire to support students in ways that are “meaningful” to the scholars.

The thesis topics are varied, from Robert Mahikwa’s aspiration to support “Indigenous Youth Aging Out of Ministry Care”—whilst simultaneously “working towards a genuine re-connection with, and re-understanding of” his own “cultural knowledges, traditions, and ancestral peoples”—to Juliet Mackie’s research project, “Reconstituting Indigenous Identities through Portraiture and Storytelling: Reclaiming Representation for Indigenous Women and Two-Spirit People.”

Even as a non-academic, it was compelling to read about the various scholars’ Indigenous research methodologies. Mahikwa used “Storywork” as his methodology and incorporated “oral traditions and storytelling practices as [his] methods.” Shelley LaFrance, in BC, utilized “storytelling and autoethnography” in her project, “A Métis Grandmother’s Knowledge,” with research guided by “decolonizing theory” and “the Cree Medicine Wheel.” Tanille Johnston, from the We Wai Kai Nation, examined “Indigenous Fathers and Their Paths into Fatherhood.” Her essay “encourages social workers to strive for Father inclusion,” and she also used a storytelling methodology. mel lefebvre deliberately renounced capitals to honour the traditional, noncapitalized michif and nêhiyawêwin languages, and used podcasting to highlight the “decolonization, collective care, and self-care” of “urban indigiqueers, trans, two-spirit folks and indigenous women.” Juliet Mackie applied portraiture and storytelling in her research, and I applaud her “Métis Kitchen Table Methodology,” which includes visiting, food, and music.

My favourite piece is Shawna Bowler’s. Bowler employed “a beading methodology” to “explore the experiences of five urban Indigenous women in Winnipeg,” and gifted each participant with a beaded medicine bag she’d made. The act of beading with others was “decolonizing and healing,” and the writer did an excellent job of relating beading and social work. “Bead by bead, we retell our stories.”

As Carrière and Richardson maintain, “In the midst of ongoing colonizing practices in Canada, we look for signs of light.” This book is one of those bright signs. 

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

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“nēhiyawētān kīkināhk /Speaking Cree in the Home: A Beginner’s Guide for Families”

By Belinda Daniels and Andrea Custer

Foreword by Solomon Ratt, Illustrations by Lana Whiskeyjack

Published by University of Regina Press

Review by Shelley A. Leedahl

$89.95 Hardcover, $19.95 Paperback   ISBN 9-780889-779037

   

It’s been said that learning one’s Indigenous language is fundamental to the process of decolonization, of understanding one’s culture, and also of understanding the world, and thus I’m pleased to see this book that helps Indigenous peoples’ learn Cree at home, and “begin their own journey of reclaiming and revitalizing Cree.” 

nēhiyawētān kīkināhk / Speaking Cree in the Home: A Beginner’s Guide for Families is an attractive manual that “helps re-forge connections between identity, language, family, and community” in a practical way. Authors Belinda Daniels (founder of the not-for-profit language revitalization organization nēhiyawak Language Experience Inc. and an assistant professor at the University of Victoria in Indigenous Education, Daniels hales from Sturgeon lake, SK) and Andrea Custer (a Woodland Cree from Pelican Narrows who earned her MEd from the University of Saskatchewan, taught in numerous schools, writes curriculum, and now works at Regina’s First Nations University as a Cree language lecturer) are equally passionate about language revitalization. Custer says “language shapes our beliefs and values, which in turn affect our attitudes and behaviours.” On her website, andreacuster.ca, she writes: “For over a decade, I've dedicated my life to teaching and preserving nīhithawīwin, our Cree language, as I believe it holds the key to our identity, culture, and future.”

Custer is a first-language speaker, Daniels a second-language learner. Together these educators have the rich experience necessary to steer Cree language learners in the right direction, as “The way Indigenous people learn and understand this world is very different from how Europeans learn and understand this world.”

This guide, shortlisted for the Saskatchewan Book Award Publishing in Education Award 2023, includes short chapters that outline Cree language history, Cree’s broad geographical landscape and the five dialects of the language (Plains Cree is the ‘Y’ dialect), a section called “The Invasion” concerning the arrival of European explorers to “the territory of what is now called Saskatchewan,” plus a few pages on Indigenous ways of learning, education, and “Colonization and Decolonization.” In Part Three readers are treated to personal essays in which the editors “position [themselves] as mothers and caregivers of [their] homes.” Custer explains that her youngest daughter “learned English first and Cree second,” and her last-born child (she has five) “is currently immersed in Cree so that it becomes his first language.”

The chapter on various methods of learning Cree is interesting, ie: “Once you learn a word or phrase in Cree … never use that word in English again,” clapping syllables, using complete sentences when talking to children, and monthly goal-setting. As “language activists” and parents, Daniels and Custer include practical and fun ways to bring Cree into the everyday, ie: via beading, berry picking, road trips, mealtimes, nature walks, music, websites, Facebook, creating a photo album, smudging and praying.

Parents may chuckle over a few phrases in the glossary which demonstrate that this is a very realistic guide for contemporary families. If parents wish to communicate “Put your iPad away” or “No more gaming,” they’ll find the Cree translations here.   

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

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"The Haunted Horn"

by Edward Willett

Published by Endless Sky Books

Review by Shelley A. Leedahl

$19.99  ISBN 978-1-998273-70-6

 

Wow: Regina’s Edward Willett has done it again. He’s written a book—this time a light-hearted, middle years’ horror—that’s certain to keep young readers transfixed. The longtime multi-genre writer and publisher’s cracked the code to literary success: his plots zoom; his characters are credible and maintain distinctive voices; and he understands literary craft. In The Haunted Horn, the American Civil War meets present day and reality meets the supernatural, and it’s all more fun that a bunch of bugles.    

This engaging, republished novel (first edition, 2012) is set in “Oak Bluffs, Arkansas,” where Union soldiers defeated the Confederates in a fiery battle that closed out the Civil War. It revolves around eighth-grader Alex, a creative only child—he fancies himself “a future best-selling novelist”—small for his size, smart in science and English, and a French horn player in the school’s marching band. Willett notably reveals that Alex’s family is upper middle class: antique-obsessed Mom picks Alex up at school in a Lincoln SUV; Dad recently left retail management when elected to town council. Alex is a target for bully Sammy Findlater and his gang, and Sammy’s on the war path more than usual after Alex accidentally knocks over the fiend’s “elaborate toothpick model of the Great Wall of China.”

The aforementioned accident—Alex is clutzy—happens on an already horrid Friday, and after school Alex is forced to go to a country auction with his mom. While digging through “junk,” ie: “rusted horseshoe nails … a German Bible, three marbles, a bedraggled stuffed hummingbird posed rather stiffly on a piece of wire above a carved wooden flower”—Willett’s a master of including fine details— Alex also finds a “horned-toad ugly” Confederate bugle for $20. After two hours of polishing, the bugle “glowed in the soft light as though illuminated from within.” Before he’s even had time to blow it, cruel Sammy et al rough Alex up because the ringleader wants the bugle as retribution for the toothpick fiasco.

Everything’s heating up. Tough-looking Annie Parker sticks up for Alex and becomes a friend, though she’s self-conscious about the fact that her mother’s the mayor’s maid. And why does she want to bring Sammy down? Alex’s dad’s plans to stage a Battle of Oak Bluff’s anniversary re-enactment  go haywire because someone (or something) keeps chewing up and burning the town square “battleground.” Even the four historic cannons have been moved. Alex’s band teacher wants him to play the bugle at Friday’s football game. And after a dramatic Chapter Five chase scene (with Chinese food), Alex finally lifts the old bugle to his lips, the “cold metal twisting in his hand as though alive,” and a ghost boy in Civil War garb is awakened. Visceral war nightmares commence, and Alex and Annie collaborate to learn what in the Sam Hill is going on.    

Mystery, horror, and self-deprecating humour abound as Alex learns more about the ghost boy—and more about his adolescent self—in this dynamic, entertaining and highly recommended novel.           

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

 

 

Two New Reviews: “Wîhtamawik/Tell Them: On a Life of Inspiration” by Louise Bernice Half - Sky Dancer, and Blue thinks itself within me: Lyric poetry, ecology and lichenous form by Kim Trainor

“Wîhtamawik/Tell Them: On a Life of Inspiration”

Written by Louise Bernice Halfe – Sky Dancer

Published by University of Regina Press

Review by Shelley A. Leedahl

$27.95  ISBN 9-781779-400840

 

 

Award-winning Saskatchewan writer Louise Bernice Halfe – Sky Dancer is renowned for her candid, Cree-infused poetry and presentations. Her latest book, Wîhtamawik/Tell Them: On a Life of Inspiration, braids memoir, poetry and essays to reveal where the author’s found inspiration and, I would say, contentment, after a tumultuous early start. In the eloquent introduction by the author’s daughter, Omeasoo Wahpasiw, the latter writes: “My mom dances with both her bones and the bones of our people, and when they poke and punch her with their insistent rattling, she does us all a favour, as painful as it is, and leaves them naked in the wind.”

Until age seven, Halfe lived with her family in a log cabin on the Saddle Lake Reserve and practiced traditional Cree ways of life. She doesn’t pretend that it was perfect. Her father drank and was emotionally volatile (“His heart was a cave of stalactites.”). Her parents “stooked hay, picked rocks/in white farmers’ fields”. Halfe “learned to hunt, skin, and butcher game through non-verbal methods. [She] also watched [her] grandparents work on the land and live their spirituality.” She was forced to attend Blue Quills Residential School in St. Paul, Alberta at age seven, and for the next seven years was stripped of using the Cree language she’d grown up with, endured abuse, and lost her identity.

Regaining the Cree language—nêhiyawêwin is used liberally in this work, and an extensive glossary’s included—has been central to Halfe’s personal and professional development. “We must examine and appreciate the depth and richness of our language in order to understand our ceremonies and the heart of our culture. Indigenous languages … cradle the traditional knowledge and wisdom of the people,” she writes. “We need this language of meaning and purpose, of action and vitality, to lift us beyond the era of victimization.”   

I appreciate that this book takes on so much. There’s inspiration and the writing process (she compares it to autumn leaves that “twist and turn with the sun, whipped and rattled by the winds”); personal history (“No running water. Just buckets/of slough water sifted/through a pillowcase.”), including her spirituality, in which ceremony is of great import; her trust in dreams as “a source of information;” the influence of storytelling and Elders; environmental awareness and great respect for the natural world; the value of long walks; legends; much about wind (yótin), which “gives us direction and carries the breath of all life” and is featured in many of the poems; and there is the poetry itself—or simply poetic lines within her prose—that have given me fresh appreciation for her writing, ie: “winter is on the small hairs of my arms.”

“The past is forever present,” Halfe writes in “A Keening,” and many of us spend our lifetimes figuring out how to reconcile this. Halfe appears to be well on her way. “I live and walk this life in both high heels and moccasins,” she shares, and we who read her are the luckier for it.  

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

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“Blue thinks itself within me”

Written by Kim Trainor

Published by University of Regina Press

Review by Shelley A. Leedahl

$27.95  ISBN 9-781779-401205

 

 

I knew I was in for a different kind of book when I read the author’s dedication, which begins: “For the flying beings, the ones with sharp teeth,/the ones who swim, the fire stones, the trees, the rain.” By the end of prize-winning Vancouver writer Kim Trainor’s text, Blue thinks itself within me, I can affirm that her dedication tracks.

Trainor sees, hears, experiences and questions with the intensity of a scientist and the detail of an artist as she draws readers both into the forest at the two-year Fairy Creek blockade near Vancouver Island’s Port Renfrew—where she joined other protestors to protect old growth logging—and through her elegiac and philosophical quandary re: how best to approach writing a long lyric poem about the oldgrowth specklebelly lichen (a rare and threatened species found on yellow cedar in ancient forests) in a kind of respectful co-making with this oldgrowth resident.

Trainor describes artist Natasha Lavdovsky’s discovery of “over sixty trees draped in glittering specklebelly,” and explains that “The finding of such a large community of oldgrowth specklebelly was evidence of the age of this forest that Teal-Jones [“a privately owned timber harvesting and primary lumber product manufacturing company” – tealjones.com] was in the process of cutting down ...”

The book brims with questions, ie: “What tools might lyric poetry bring to a project of co-making of the world with our more-than-human kin, in the face of this slow-burning ecological catastrophe? What furious witness?” and “How will I stitch the poem’s ecosystem into its seams …?”

Trainor admits that her deep dive into how to work artistically with oldgrowth specklebelly lichen at times “engages with complex poetic and ecological theories.” True thing. I far more enjoyed the concrete, sensory-rich descriptions of the Fairy Creek site, where protestors had “code names”—Trainor was “Crow”—and shared supplies: “headlamps, compressions sacks, dry bags, whistles, and a body cam for arrestees to wear in order to document their experiences.” She acknowledges that the land-defenders “combine[d] the most basic of technologies, fire, and one of the most complex, the smartphone, as [they held] vigil with forest and kin.” Constant rain; working in the dark; difficult terrain; and interactions with RCMP, liaison officers, and paramilitary-trained officers (with the Community Industry Response Group) made for great challenges. The protestors created “hard blocks,” “soft blocks” and “blobs” (with protestors interlocking arms), and Trainor was sometimes on the front line. “A blue [RCMP officer] gouged his thumb under my chin, then slipped his hand down to my neck and pressed so hard I couldn’t breathe, his other thumb screwed into my right shoulder at a painful pressure point.” I understand the passion here; one of my family members also participated in the Fairy Creek blockade.

The nonfiction book also includes Trainor’s quiet, beautiful, sensorial moments—a necessary counterpoint. “At night in my one-person tent, the sound of the creek rises, flows through huckleberry and salal, seeps through thin nylon, flesh, bone. I am awash with creek. World pours in.”           

   

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

 

 

Four New Reviews: "Something for the Dark" by Randy Lundy; "Into the D/ark" by David Elias; "The Chorus Beneath Our Feet" by Melanie Schnell; and "My Monster Mommy," written by Megan Ryan, illustrated by Brenna Senger

“Something for the Dark”

Written by Randy Lundy

Published by University of Regina Press

Review by Shelley A. Leedahl

$19.95 ISBN 9-781779-400888

 

I’ve reviewed four of Randy Lundy’s transcendent poetry collections, and each time I’ve come away thinking surely this is as good as he gets. Then a new title’s released … and the ceiling rises again.  

Something for the Dark, Lundy’s latest, follows Field Notes for the Self (2020) and Blackbird Song (2018) in a trilogy of meditative books that address the whole of it: life and meaning; connections with people and place (he’s often “on the back deck” with cigarettes and coffee, and his poems surreptitiously venerate the prairies he long resided on); seasons; his beloved creatures (particularly dogs and birds); nothingness and silence; and writing poetry (“These lines are getting the/discussion nowhere”).

I built a fire in the woodstove, lifted the old dog up onto the couch, and, in silence and solitude, let the words nourish me. Lundy possesses the artist’s gift of seeing, certainly, but he also exhibits the rare ability to render images and experiences into something other, something that borders on the holy—a crow feasting on the rib of a “road-killed deer” holds “a strip of meat/in its beak, a red prayer flag hanging limp in the February wind.” Poem after poem, we find a singular “kind of knowing” and acceptance, ie: “There will be dark and cold; it will go on for/days and months.”

There are at least a dozen uses of “nothing,” including “Nothing is hidden here;”  “Nothing remains/to say;” and a “silent, brooding” father:

           sitting at a kitchen table in a

           fourteen-foot-wide trailer, one hand holding a cup of coffee

           in front of him and a cigarette hanging forgotten in the other,

           staring out the single-pane window and seeing nothing but

           his past

Lundy’s father “died early and alone at the back/of the trailer [the poet] grew up in.” All these nothings contain much, including a grandfather who “taught me/to make of silence something rather than nothing,/something from nothing.”

I believe we all need poets to tell us what we didn’t know we were yearning to hear: that “A broken, long-/abandoned wasps’ nest [hangs] like the body/of a headless owl. And, for those who write and those who don’t, that “our job is to stand at a distance,/avert our gaze,/and wait.”

Lundy slices away the noise and gently, even reverently, delivers us to emotional ground zeros, ie: a man who has just chainsawed his rotting apple tree is weeping, in part because “rotted-into-emptiness” rings personal. The tears make him feel

          embarrassed, even

          slightly ashamed, though there was no witness except the two

          dogs, one on either side, muzzles raised in concern, taking turns

          rubbing and then leaning their weights against [his] legs.  

Consider “the dog’s/ears that hang like a pair of temple bells.” The red meat of Lundy’s prayer flag. This writing feels like a new religion, but it’s the oldest of all—the one in which “rocks breathe,” and “your spirit has nothing to do with/heaven or eternity./Just these things, here and now, that you can touch and see.” Preach, Poet.

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

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“Into the D/ark”

Written by David Elias

Published by Radiant Press

Review by Shelley A. Leedahl

$22.00  ISBN 9-781998-926381

   

Into the D/ark is the dream-like and aptly-titled new novel by veteran Winnipeg writer David Elias, as all is not well for blacksmith/artist Clarence; his wife, Rose; and their fire-disfigured sons in rural Manitoba circa 1963. Indeed, Rose’s best friend, Martha—who inadvertently photographs JFK’s assassination while on holiday—and her fanatical, ark-building brother, Abe, are also battling demons. Like the snow-whipped landscape, the characters are driven toward a frenzy with their disparate obsessions: Rose’s love of women’s magazines; her self-exiled sons’ non-stop watching of American TV programs (their panacea in the rough shack they’ve named “Bachelor’s Paradise);” Martha’s black and white photography, and her secret love for Rose; Abe’s ark project; and Clarence’s shift from welding farm implements to creating nonsensical metal monsters.

The key to this original book’s success is manyfold. Firstly, the distinct characterizations and the author’s ability to credibly portray madness are remarkable: an entire, almost fantastical chapter is dedicated to Clarence’s unravelling, which coincides with the removal of his welding mask:

 

          … he now bathed in glorious unending light, all because he kept

          his naked eyes fixed on the dazzling blaze of metallic fusion, never

          looking away, never yielding, until he’d noticed the fiery sphere where

          the welding rod met the steel grow and widen, brighten, intensify, until

          it expanded to fill the entire room and left him standing in a sea of pure

          white.

 

If this sounds Rapturous, it’s deliberate. This is Mennonite country. Clarence’s fervour among his “phalanx of iron creatures” takes on a quasi-religious tone, and it’s akin to scripture-quoting Abe’s passion for his ark. These are creation stories of a strange kind. Both men are “Not eating. Not sleeping or bathing. Wearing [the] same clothes day in and day out.” Clarence is regularly “embroiled in the maelstrom of a wildly complex idea that buzzed his brain like a crazed moth,” and “a cocktail of toxic chemicals” is “slowly poisoning” him.

There’s heavy use of symbolism, ie: the image of “Tiny droplets of mist” is reimagined throughout the novel as sparks, snow, ashes, and the spray of blood on Jacqueline Kennedy’s pink pillbox hat. The “shiny” stool in Clarence’s shop echoes the boys’ burned skin; JFK’s “thick, shiny hair” the moment before he was shot; and the First Lady crawling across the car’s “shiny black surface” in the moment after.              

Elias masters both sweet scenes (Rose milking a cow; Rose rubbing lanolin into her sons’ ruined skin) and the macabre—the blacksmith shop’s explosion that “[liquefied] the skin on her boys’ hands and faces,” and the Kennedy assassination, in close-up.

Elias also addresses the “self-imposed exile” of men, and Martha infers  that “All that conspicuous absence and suffering was really a gesture. A feeble attempt at some kind of heroism.” Human connections, community—these render a person healthy and whole.

From the bright flame of the welding torch to the darkness of human nature, this brilliant novel contains it all. Its unforgettable climactic scene is something you must discover for yourself.

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

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“My Monster Mommy”

Written by Megan Ryan

Illustrated by Brenna Senger

Published by Meow! Pete’s Press

Review by Shelley A. Leedahl

$15.99 ISBN 9781069345912

 

The luckiest among us were read to as children, and long may that wonderful tradition continue. Giving children books as gifts—and spending quality time sharing these books with our loved ones—can lead to a lifelong love of literature. In today’s hectic technological era, I wondered if the sharing of “bedtime stories” is something that exhausted contemporary parents still have the time and energy for. After a little Googling, I learned that as recently as 2024, children's and YA books [still] accounted for 40% of all English-language book sales in Canada. That’s great news—for writers and readers.

With all the children’s books published over the centuries, coming up with original ideas can be challenging, but Saskatchewan writer—and busy mom—Megan Ryan has a delightful new children’s book that is indeed unique. My Monster Mommy is also timely: it addresses how mothers who also work outside the home might be extra tired, and require a little “alone time” as they switch gears between their jobs/careers and family time.

The softcover My Monster Mommy—digitally illustrated by Brenna Senger— introduces us to young Sammy, who’s concerned that his mother is some kind of monster because of the unusual things she says and does. After a “fraught” night, the child finds his father watching football—and here illustrator Senger uses humour to show a male figure literally watching a stationary football on a screen—and asks if mom’s “turning into a Yeti,” because “She was hairy and stinky and her mood was real sour.” Sammy’s patient and loving father ensures him that his mother is not becoming a Yeti, “but she does/need her time,/For personal hygiene,/to help her feel fine.”

The book, dedicated to “all the moms who feel like monsters,” addresses this grown-up theme in a way that children can both comprehend and enjoy. The story’s told in rhyme, providing a musicality that children aged three to eight might especially appreciate.   

Still unconvinced, Sammy wonders if perhaps his mother’s a Zombie (“She got up with her eyes closed and walked/into the door!”), or a Ghost (“Sometimes when I look for her, she/vanishes! Poof!”), or a Banshee (her awful shower singing has even Sammy’s omnipresent stuffed dinosaur holding his hands over his ears). She comes home late and sometimes Sammy doesn’t see her until the morning: could she be a Vampire? Again, each of Sammy’s concerns is quelled by his compassionate father. He confirms that the boy’s mother loves Sammy deeply, and that “Being a mother is the most precious gift, But/sometimes she just needs a break from her/shift.”

 We learn that Sammy’s mother is a nurse who works nightshifts. The book’s author is a longtime Care Aid in Saskatoon. This topical story, paired with Senger’s bold, humorous and telling illustrations, ie: dust bunnies under the couch, would be a great addition to any child’s library, but especially to the scores of youngsters whose mothers share the simultaneous responsibilities of earning income and trying to be the best mother possible.   

 

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

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“The Chorus Beneath Our Feet”

Written by Melanie Schnell

Published by Radiant Press

Review by Shelley A. Leedahl

$25.00  ISBN 9-781998-926329

   

Regina writer Melanie Schnell’s debut novel, While the Sun is Above Us, earned her the Saskatchewan First Book Award and The City of Regina Award at the 2013 Saskatchewan Book Awards, and I expect her recently released second novel, The Chorus Beneath Our Feet, will also garner attention, particularly for its ambitious plot.  

Schnell’s braided several surprisingly disparate elements and parallelled the relationships between two sets of siblings in this crime story set in “Ravenwood,” Alberta. The first brother and sister were among the 100,000 Barnardo’s Homes’ children shipped from England to Canada to labour on farms between 1869 – 1948. These 100,000 “home children” were ripped from their families and treated extremely poorly in Canada. Ravenwood rumours suggest that the bodies of these separated siblings are buried beneath the massive oak tree (the “Harron Tree”) in the city’s central park. A local construction company is razing the tree for the construction of a mall, and protesters are rallying around the stately oak.

The second set of siblings are Jes, an army Sargeant who’s returned home after eight years in Afghanistan—he’s accompanying his fellow soldier and best friend’s body, and Jes himself is sporting an eye patch thanks to the same explosion that killed his buddy—and Mary. Jes and his weird-since-childhood sister lived with a “mean drunk” father, and their mother was killed in a car accident when Mary was twelve. Mary stopped speaking shortly after the fatality, and now she’s “ended up in the park with the other homeless people,” including the delusional Norse-mythology-themed-cult leader, Izzy. Jes literally sleeps in the oak tree, which has  “told [her] its real name” (“Oman”), offers her “a secret knowledge,” and has shared that the home children’s bodies are indeed buried beneath the oak’s canopy, and they must be reunited before the tree is felled.  

Jes never treated his strange sister—who writes “maddening nonsensical notes”—kindly, and he’s remorseful now, especially once he learns that a newborn’s body was found hanging in the tree and the police want to question Mary in connection with the murder.

There’s a strong sense of immediacy here: the park’s demolition begins Saturday; Neil’s funeral in Edmonton is also on Saturday, and protocol requires that Jes be there; mentally ill “Charlie,” another unhomed park dweller, informs Jes that Mary’s life’s in danger; and nobody can tell Jes where his sister is. The clock’s ticking. Mary believes Jes can save the tree (and thus reunite the historical siblings), but as has been her way, she’s left only obscure notes for her brother. She’s learned that “in the cacophony of life, to pierce the rampant blindness and deafness, one must attempt to communicate in a way that the words can touch someone deep beneath their skin,” as Oman communicates with her.

The various subplots and the connections between characters are much like a tree’s tangled and extensive root system. This fast-paced novel reminds us to offer grace to ourselves … and to those who are nothing like us.           

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