Three Book Reviews: “Half-Wild and Other Stories of Encounter” by Emily Paskevics; “#BlackInSchool” by Habiba Cooper Diallo; and "The Amnesia Project” by Payton Todd

“Half-Wild and Other Stories of Encounter”

Written by Emily Paskevics

Published by Thistledown Press

Review by Shelley A. Leedahl

$24.95  ISBN 9781771872485

 

It’s entirely rare that a first book packs a punch like Emily Paskevics’ Half-Wild and Other Stories of Encounter. The Ontario writer’s auspicious debut is multi-layered, engrossing, and technically well-wrought (Paskevics is a graduate of the Humber School for Writers), and it credibly features the no-nonsense, hunting-and-fishing folks who populate Ontario’s hardy wilderness communities.

If you love gothic literature, you’ll devour these dozen stories. Think taxidermy. Animal fetuses in jars. Hitting a strange creature with your car on a dark, lonely road. Think “mobile home with its porch light swinging … The blue painted door is all scratched up from when a bear tried to get in”. Often characters are fleeing, or someone close to them has recently died, and the remote landscapes—rife with bears, wolves, coyotes, harsh climate and dangerous waters—brilliantly parallel the characters’ dire situations, their psychological turmoil, and the endangered ecosystem.    

“Bear Bones” is set in Sadowa, where “deer-crossing signs [are] half-battered with buckshot,” a snowstorm’s afoot, and Louisa’s gone missing in a “man’s oilskin coat”. There’s a touch of magic realism at play, but the next story—also featuring loner characters—is 100% dirty realism. Two unhappy, teenaged outsiders meet in a marshy bird sanctuary. A slingshot’s involved. The narrator says: “I bought a pair of binoculars from the rummage sale at the People’s Church in town. One of the lenses was busted, but if I closed my left eye slightly I could still get a decent view”.      

Paskevics’ characters are hardcore. They understand the forest—and perhaps thrive better within it than they do within towns, cities, and relationships. The women muck through marshes, know bird calls, use chainsaws, and can identify scat. Evelyn (“The Best Little Hunter”), at age fourteen, shot, skinned and tanned a black bear, and had been “a card-carrying member of the [Sadowa Hunting Club] since she was old enough to hold a rifle steady”. Professor Ladowsky (“My Father’s Apiary”) is divorced, has lost her parents, and has suffered repeated miscarriages. Back at her father’s cabin, she says: “the surrounding forest somehow felt like the only family I had left”.  Heidi, from “Predators,” got an education in the city, but returns home to Sadowa to waitress at a “dingy pub”.

And here’s Paskevics’ skill re: details. A woodstove fire fills a room with scents of “smoked cherry wood, beeswax, and crushed herbs”. Night “comes alive in a rush of dry heat and cricket song. An acrid note of smoke hangs in the dry air from the wildfires up north”. Sylvia, from the title story, returns to her deceased mother’s home in the boreal forest and catches “the scent of spearmint in the overgrown grass by the front steps”.

“Wolff Island” is marvelously moody—one of the book’s best: Martin’s wife and child go missing on Wolff Island, where a warden tells him “You can’t go missing on this island”.

Paskevics’ “half-wild” characters will draw you into their woods, and, as the song goes, you’re in for a big surprise.    

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

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“#BlackInSchool”

By Habiba Cooper Diallo

Published by University of Regina Press

Review by Shelley A. Leedahl

$20.95  ISBN 9-780889-778184

   

Young Halifax writer Habiba Cooper Diallo has much to say about being a Black student at a Halifax high school that prides itself on being the “most diverse school east of Montreal”. #BlackInSchool is her non-fiction account of the International Baccalaureate student’s frequent experience with racism, and it clearly airs her frustrations with the “complete absence of cultural competency on the part of staff/administrators and many students,” and with the school’s curriculum itself.  

The writer decries the “graphic whitewashing of school through posters;” says “Africa, the hashtag, [is] inserted like a punctuation mark wherever empathy is needed;” and disparages “the Eurocentric approach to learning”. She writes letters to politicians and administrators, and creates a petition re: equity for Black students at Dalhousie University.

Interestingly, this unsettling story’s told via journal entries Cooper Diallo wrote in Grades 11 and 12 (2011-2014). The author’s articulate and mature, but some of her activities (ie: “chatting for hours in the mall’s food court” with friends) are also youthful, and she adopts the Twitter-world’s # (hashtag) in her title—a symbol rarely used in formal writing—and throughout the book to reiterate her major issues. The hashtag’s effect is not unlike a fist being pumped in the air. Quotes proliferate, with sources ranging from Canada’s former Governor General, Miachëlle Jean, to the Mandelas.

As Dr. Awad Ibrahim attests in his eloquent Foreword, this book “opens cracks through which we hear a voice of a young person who is grounded in the real, has a deep understanding of the world around her in a way that is beyond her age, and who knows what it means and how to become fully human”. Cooper Diallo’s Introduction reminds readers that she was “going through a difficult few years” as she was writing these entries, but rather than simply accept the micro and macro-aggressions she experienced during high school, she chose “to document, process, and resist the constant abrasions of systemic racism as they rasped against her young body”. She clarifies that her use of the term “body” also entails Black students’ “mental, emotional, and spiritual bodies, all of which coalesce to make us human”.

Cooper Diallo comes by her activism honestly. Her mother’s photo’s on a poster in the school’s library “for her groundbreaking work on slavery in Canada”. In the chapter #Legacies, Cooper Diallo says she attended an “Underground Railroad conference in Detroit” with her mother, and later considered how though “plantation slavery in the Americas” has ended, when the writer sees “exploit[ive] images of young children purportedly from Ethiopia or Mali walking three miles to get water with flies on their faces as a strategy to capitalize on donor spending from guilt-ridden child sponsors” who “pay themselves large sums in administrative overhead fees,” she’s “reminded that [Blacks’] physical autonomy … is compromised” and “at the disposal of ‘well-intentioned’ white people”.   

It seems Cooper Diallo’s taken Rosa Park’s assertion—“You must never be fearful about what you are doing when it’s right”—to heart. Cooper Diallo:

#smartyoungblackwomanusingherpowerfulvoiceforchange.

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

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“The Amnesia Project”

Written by Payton Todd

Published by Wood Dragon Books

Review by Shelley A. Leedahl

$19.99 ISBN 9-781990-863264

 

Keeping journals and writing poetry are common practices among teens, and I commend them for documenting their lives, even if no one else ever sees the writing. Some of our most exciting and/or trying experiences may occur during adolescence, and writing’s good therapy. What’s highly uncommon, however, is for a teenaged writer to have a book published, and for that book to be a 302-paged, young adult sci-fi novel with a large cast of well-developed characters, a complex and dynamic plot, and a satisfying conclusion.

Enter Payton Todd and The Amnesia Project. At age fifteen, the avid writer and student from Wood Mountain, SK won the Wood Dragon Books’ Young Author Competition. After working with publisher Jeanne Martinson on successive edits, the attractive, action-filled novel was released. In an interview with moosejawtoday.com, Martinson said “Wood Dragon worked around Payton’s school schedule, and she lives on a [cattle] ranch, too, so she has a lot of chores and obligations. We’re really proud of this book …”

The futuristic novel centres around seventeen-year-old Kole Danvers, who finds himself assigned a new name and position—Beta 9X—at the Pacific Acting Authority Council (PAAC). He’s second-in-command within a team of four other teens, including white-haired Astrid, Alpha to his Beta. Initially “̒About as warm as a glacier. Snuggly as a jackhammer,’” confident Astrid much later “̒makes secure places feel safer’”. PAAC is a “post-war military operation that trains small teams, called units, to neutralize possible threats before they can spiral out of control and start another war”. But can PAAC be trusted? How have these young soldiers arrived at the compound? Who is the “̒new breed of soldier’” in the “incubation chamber”? And why is Kole having flashbacks from childhood when the other recruits (save a few) have no memories of life before PAAC?

Unlike Astrid, protagonist Kole lacks self-confidence. He also recognizes that he’s been craving “inclusiveness,” and he finds it among his cohorts: tough Astrid; brainy Colin; clownish Allister; and soft-spoken Maisie. Together the team trains physically and mentally for their missions, ie: “to rescue a group of young children from a refugee camp an hour’s flight off compound”.

I’m most impressed by how deftly Todd writes action scenes, which could quickly become melodramatic. It’s easy to “see” the fight scenes, and the author clearly knows about things like “flip holds,” and the science of flammables. She also uses a number of similes, which elevate the fiction toward poetry. Of one of Kole’s frequent childhood memories, Todd writes: “The memory fades like a fast-moving fog, billowing away and just out of reach”.  When Astrid’s injured during a mission, the gash on her arm “spits pink bubbles like a science fair volcano”.  There’s humour, credible dialogue, and interesting secondary characters.  

Martinson says the Wood Dragon Books’ Young Author Competition will be held annually. “Payton is a serious writer who intends on making the publishing industry her field, and those are the kinds of writers we really want to zoom in on.” Wonderful!

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

 

 

Book Review: The Economy of Sparrows by Trevor Herriot

“The Economy of Sparrows”

Written by Trevor Herriot

Published by Thistledown Press

Review by Shelley A. Leedahl

$24.95  ISBN 9781771872461

 

I’m considering what I enjoyed most about award-winning Regina writer, grassland conservationist, and naturalist Trevor Herriot’s first foray into fiction.

His debut novel, The Economy of Sparrows, conveys the story of pensioner Nell Rowan, a Saskatchewan-born birder and researcher who—after earning a biology degree at Carleton and working for two decades as a night janitor cleaning “the bathrooms and hallways of the National Museum of Nature’s research and collections facility”—returns to her family’s southern Saskatchewan farmstead and remains dedicated to learning everything possible about “long-dead bird collector” William Spreadborough, and the other early naturalists and collectors she read about on her work breaks. Is there some connection between Spreadborough and her own family?

This multi-layered book succeeds on every level. Firstly, the plot: Nell’s obsession with Spreadborough drives the story, but there’s also a mother who walked into winter and was never found; a teenaged foster child with a knack for communicating with animals; interesting rural neighbours; and Nell’s passion for documenting the birds in her area … her “bird survey stuff”. Nell tries to remain optimistic, but her faith in policy-makers re: reports, surveys and environmental assessments (“mostly smoke and mirrors”) feels “like messages set adrift in bottles on an ocean of apathy”. As a child she learned that “the beauty of creatures” had the ability to both “stir something in her” and “comfort”—now her dog’s “expressive face was what got her out of bed each morning”.  

Herriot’s comprehensive knowledge of birds and prairie conservation is well-served. Chapters begin with a descriptive excerpt from Taverner’s Birds of Western Canada: this includes facts about various bird species, as well as the birds’ “Economic Status,” ie: the Vesper Sparrow is “One of the most beneficial of the sparrows … therefore, should receive every possible protection.”

Make no mistake, this is a highly political story, right down to “gravel operations ruining their road;” Nell’s dilemma concerning an application for Century Farm status, considering “settler privilege, broken treaties, [and] the rest of it;” climate change truths; “No trees, no shrubs, no grass, no wetlands, just the uniform green of canola;” and, especially, the critical importance of maintaining habitat for birds and insects.  

Herriot’s writing skill is exemplary: “They passed a shelterbelt of trees surrounding the ruined shell of a house, weathered to a wasp-nest grey, windows like empty eye sockets.” Melancholy veritably oozes from this line.   

The characterizations of Nell, fifteen-year-old Carmelita, and several secondary characters are well-wrought and credible, ie: in Nell’s pasture Carmelita sits on a “waist-high boulder spangled with orange lichen” and says: “̒I get like four bars here.’”

Certainly Herriot underscores that “Western civilization [is] at odds with nature,” but all the conservation conversations aside, this captivating story is not at all predictable. We learn much about Nell, the “aging naturalist” with “a soft spot for sparrows,” but I couldn’t have guessed what would progress—and it’s gripping.

In short, Herriot adeptly pulls together his storyline’s sticks and strings and builds one hell of a nest.  

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

Five Reviews: kâ-pî-isi-kiskisiyân / The Way I Remember” by Solomon Ratt; “nēhiyawēwin awāsi-masinahikanis: A Little Plains Cree Book for Children: A Reference for Teaching the Plains Cree Language” by Patricia Deiter, Allen J. (A.J.) Felix and Elmer Ballantyne; "The School of the Haunted River" by Colleen Gerwing; "Cathedral of Stars: A Memoir of Home & Faith on the Move” by Gloria Engel; and "Always Another River” by Daryl Sexsmith

“kâ-pî-isi-kiskisiyân / The Way I Remember”

By Solomon Ratt

Published by University of Regina Press

Review by Shelley A. Leedahl

$25.95  ISBN 9-780889-779143

   

I went to school with a relative of educator, writer, storyteller and keeper of the Woods Cree language, Solomon Ratt, so when his memoir kâ-pî-isi-kiskisiyân / The Way I Remember became available for review, I requested it.

Blurbs from Buffy Sainte-Marie (“Sol is an international treasure …”) and Maria Campbell (“This is an important book …”) demonstrate that Ratt’s highly lauded for his work in restoring Woods Cree and preserving the traditional stories he heard near his home community “on the banks on the Churchill River just north of … Stanley Mission”. Ratt’s 340-page autobiography is uniquely and significantly presented in Cree th-dialect Standard Roman Orthography, syllabics and English. The cover features a photo of the smiling author, and this joviality’s evident in many of his autobiographical stories.

Between ages six and sixteen, Ratt was “Torn from his family” for ten months each year to attend All Saints Indian Student Residential School in Prince Albert, SK. The abuse that several thousands of residential school survivors endured has been documented via the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada (2007-2015), and the multi-generational legacy of being wrenched from one’s home has been the subject of several books, but Ratt’s story differs greatly. He writes: “I was not abused, and I did not lose my language. I still speak Cree because my parents spoke Cree to me when I would go home in the summer months.” Hallelujah that.

Home was a northern wonderland where his family lived off the land … berry picking, canoeing, building a cabin, fishing, snaring, “[fetching] moosemeat,” storytelling, and enjoying traditional foods like bannock. The author shares a brief letter—his first written from residential school:

“Dear Mom,

How are you? I am fine. School is fun but I am homesick a lot. Please send bannock.”

He writes that “Each letter ended with ‘please send bannock’”.

Possessing “full retention of his mother language” has made Ratt one of a few Cree language pioneers. He learned to read and write Cree in Contemporary standard spelling (SRO) through studies at Saskatchewan Indian Federated College. The Cree Syllabics system learned via Dr. Ahab Spence “rekindled his interest in traditional stories,” like the dozen that appear in the second half of this book. Oral stories were used to teach, ie: “The Shut-eye Dancers” teaches one to “Be wary when someone offers you a wondrous gift,” and the “Wisahkecahk and the Chickadees” teaches respect of sacred ceremony, and explains why foxes have white-tipped tails.

Ratt writes that if he forgets about the residential school children who were lost and killed, he will “not show them honour” and he “will lose [his] soul”. He admits that he “wandered about lost for a long time” too, but “walked away from alcohol and drugs” thirty years ago.        

As for my former classmate, when I reached out to her, she didn’t remember me. She says she’s blocked most of her childhood, and this speaks volumes. It’s okay that I was forgotten. What’s important is that I remember her.

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

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“nēhiyawēwin awāsi-masinahikanis: A Little Plains Cree Book for Children: A Reference for Teaching the Plains Cree Language”

Written by Patricia Deiter, Allen J. (A.J.) Felix and Elmer Ballantyne; Plains Cree Translations by Elmer Ballantyne, Inez Deiter, May Desnomie, Allen J. (A.J.) Felix and Joslyn Wuttunee

Published by YNWP

Review by Shelley A. Leedahl

$74.95  ISBN 978-1-77869-004-4

 

I recently reviewed awāsi-nēhiyawēwin masinahikanis: A Little Plains Cree Colouring Book—Plains Cree People, by Saskatchewan’s Patricia Deiter, Allen J. (A.J.) Felix, and Elmer Ballantyne. The colouring book complements the learned trio’s reference guide for teaching the Plains Cree language, nēhiyawēwin awāsi-masinahikanis—A Little Plains Cree Book for Children, which I have also now read and learned from. “Plains Cree is spoken in 43 First Nations communities in Saskatchewan alone,” and the authors hope is that they, “as Plains Cree people, will still have [their] language for [their] future generations”.

In her opening acknowledgements, Deiter (White Buffalo Woman)—a “non-fluent Plains Cree speaker” and English teacher—extends gratitude to the six Elders who “provided the majority of Plains Cree translations” for the reference guide, including her mother, Inez Deiter, “who provides ongoing support for [her daughter’s] efforts to restore the Cree language to our youth”.  

The reference book follows the themes established in the Saskatchewan Curriculum Guide for Kindergarten to Grade 12 on Aboriginal Languages, with a focus on “Useful noun categories, phrases, and some basic rules for the Plains Cree language,” and an enhanced e-book edition’s also available. The writers encourage supplementing this resource book with “components of Cree language programs, including Plains Cree values and laws, the history of Plains Cree people and local history, as well as songs, games, dances, and arts and crafts”. Adding other teaching materials like flash cards makes learning even more fun for children, and it’s recommended. Repetition of words is highly important when a child’s learning vocabulary and phrases.

Though “The best path to fluency in the Plains Cree language is immersion,” the authors write that “learning one word, one phrase, and one sentence at a time is a good place to start” … as someone who has been studying Spanish since the mid-1980s, I agree!

The guide begins with instruction on the sound system. “The Plains Cree alphabet consists of 14 consonants and 7 vowels,” and among the vowels there are both short and long vowels, the latter indicated by a line (called a macron) over the letter, ie: nīpin (summer) and kōna (snow). It’s interesting to me that the months of the year are all described by a corresponding type of moon, ie: February is The Eagle Moon (mikisiwi-pīsim), June is The Hatching Moon (pāskāwihowi-pīsim), and October is The Migrating Moon (pimihāwi-pīsim).

As with the colouring book, information’s included on the extended kinship system of the Plains Cree, which is “an example of culture and language being intertwined”. Grandparents, for example, “are anyone your parents refer to as an aunt or uncle”.   

The themes of the guide’s twenty-five lessons are wide-ranging. Lesson 7, for example, is “Morning Routine” (kīkisēpāw tahki pēyakwan ka-tōtamihk). Lesson 15 is titled “Let’s make soup,” (osihtātahk mihcimāpoy) and Lesson 20 is called ‘Picking Berries” (mawisowin). The final lesson is “The Future of Plains Cree” (tanisi ōma nika nehiyawewin), and one of the sample sentences is kisīhtonīnaw nēhiyāwēwin: (“We are holding on to our language.”) Well done.   

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

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“The School of the Haunted River"

by Colleen Gerwing

Published by Endless Sky Books

Review by Shelley A. Leedahl

$24.99  ISBN 978-1-989398-86-9

   

What a surprise. It’s poetic, actually. During my Saskatoon years, each time I’d launch a book, an affable but unassuming woman I knew only by sight would attend and we’d make minimal small talk while she had her copy signed. I moved. Several years passed. I never thought of her again.

Last week a newly-released autobiographical novel arrived in the mail. The School of the Haunted River concerns outdoorswoman Jay, who takes her college-aged niece, Dilly, on a two-week snowshoeing and camping trip in northern Saskatchewan. I flipped to the author bio and photo before beginning the novel, and there she was, Colleen Gerwing, the woman who’d attended all of my Saskatoon launches. I never even knew she was writing. And I certainly never knew she’d died in 2021; this sad fact made reading her fine stories-within-a-story even more bittersweet.

In her “real” life, Gerwing, I learned, grew up on a farm near Lake Lenore, SK, and her love of adventure was evident from childhood. In 1977 she hitchhiked to the National Outdoor Leadership School in Wyoming, and later worked for the Parks Service (mostly in Prince Albert National Park), ran Wilderness Trips for Women, and shared her zest for outdoor life via the Saskatoon Boys and Girls Club. Canoeing, snowshoeing, winter camping … these were her passions. Apparently documenting her adventures was a passion, too.

In this reflective novel—the author’s cover painting of a canoeist in the boreal forest demonstrates that Gerwing was also a talented artist—the snowshoeing trip provides the frame from which Joy shares stories about her earlier canoeing adventures during the grueling, solo, five-month canoe trip that was part of her Outdoor School experience. “̒I was dropped off by plane in a remote area,’” she begins, revealing that the earlier expedition was near where the aunt and niece are now snowshoeing.

Jay’s solo canoe expedition began at the Saskquatsch Annie River, northwest of La Ronge, and she was to travel in a circular route, ending at Silver Feather Lake. Packrider “Cowboy” dropped provisions along the route every few weeks. The first night, ice and snow still on the ground, Jay slept beneath her sleek canoe: “̒ … in my sleeping bag, I squirmed like a big grub in a cocoon under trillions of stars in trillions of galaxies with unfathomable empty space between. I was nothing. And that made me feel like everything.’”      

All the wildlife encounters, weather woes, a “̒scourge of mosquitoes,’” portage and river challenges, and the hunger one would expect from an extended, solitary canoe journey are here, but it’s the revelations about self and humanity that raise this book to a higher level. Gerwing ingeniously weaves her engaging life-story into an adventure novel and fills it with life lessons and poetic gems, like “̒Sunrise is a wordless poem,’” “̒Gratitude is a moving target,’” and “̒I could’ve left, but somebody had to look for stars in the sky.’”

Thank you, Colleen Gerwing, for transporting us to your sanctuary. Rest well now.

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

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"Cathedral of Stars: A Memoir of Home & Faith on the Move”

Written by Gloria Engel

Published by YNWP

Review by Shelley A. Leedahl

$24.95  ISBN 978-1-988783-90-1

 

Cathedral of Stars: A Memoir of Home & Faith on the Move by SK-born Gloria Engel is utterly fascinating. The stories about her peripatetic life—and constant faith—as a linguist with Wycliffe Bible Translators and the Summer Institute of Linguistics is indeed hard to put down. The intrepid author asks and adeptly answers this question: “How can you find a sense of belonging in home and church when you’re constantly on the move?” Much of this global zinger of a book takes place in Guatemala, and Engel paints a colourful portrait of the family’s authentic experiences there.  

Now in her eighties, the joy-filled wife, mother of four boys, linguist, writer and dancer (a verboten activity re: her strict Lutheran upbringing) experienced “forty-five changes of residence in five countries,” before settling in Biggar, SK. The anecdotes about her resourceful family and rural SK upbringing (no indoor plumbing; folks said her father “could hold machinery together with macaroni”) are compelling, but the Guatemalan accounts left me gasping.

First came linguistics training at the University of North Dakota. Orientation sessions took place in Mexico City, then it was on to Chiapas, Mexico. After twelve weeks of “jungle survival training” there—Engel was pregnant and had three young sons at the time—the writer, her husband (fellow linguist, Ted), and their sons (aged one to six), drove to Guatemala “to do Bible translation work with Mayan people of the Pokomchi language group,” and they remained in the highland town of San Cristóbal Verapaz for a decade.

Imagine being pregnant and navigating rapids in a dugout canoe: “We capsized, and our canoe went down the river without me, while I hung on to a protruding branch.”  And that’s Main Base camp, where “several poisonous snakes were killed”. At Advance Base, her training included a “survival hike”. With machete in tow, hearty Engel “had to construct [her] own survival bed and build a campfire for warmth and protection”. Apart from the clothes on her back and a canteen, her “only equipment was a small food pack, a first-aid kit and a plastic sheet”. Even so, she says “it was a night of contentment and peace”.   

The family also spent years in Guatemala City, and one riveting chapter concerns the 1974 Guatemala earthquake and Engel’s epiphany: “I felt as though Judgment Day had come, and God was there in his terrible beauty and justice. He seemed to be shaking and breaking the whole world, while cradling me gently in his hand”. Engel was also “roughed up” during a robbery.

Post-Guatemala and after eight years in Texas, the husband and wife team were then commissioned by two drastically different churches in Vancouver: one in the infamous Downtown Eastside, the other in the wealthy Shaughnessy neighbourhood.   

Chapter after chapter, this author astounds with detailed stories about her family, and how hiking, orchid-hunting, reading, music and fellowship elevated their lives. Wherever life has taken Engel, she’s proven that “she’s got the joy, joy, joy, joy, down in her heart”.

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

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"Always Another River”

Written by Daryl Sexsmith

Published by YNWP

Review by Shelley A. Leedahl

$24.95  ISBN 978-1-77869-014-3

 

Prince Albert, SK-raised Darryl Sexmith is an avid canoe-tripper and former United Church minister who’s built his community­—wherever he’s lived—around his passion for wilderness canoeing and the fellowship group canoe-tripping naturally inspires. Reading Always Another River, his well-written, chronologically-told collection of canoe stories—he’s completed over seventy-five trips and “hasn’t hung up his paddle yet”—stirred fond memories of my own canoeing experiences. It’s a Canadian thing, eh.

The nineteen chapters are mostly titled by location, and it’s evident that Sexsmith’s playground has predominantly been the rivers (and lakes) of northern Saskatchewan, but his lifetime of paddling expeditions also includes the far north. He’s a former executive director of Canadian Parks and Wilderness Society’s (CPAWS) Northwest Territories chapter, and in that role he canoed the South Nahanni and Mackenzie rivers to promote conservation. He also participated in the 2008 David Thompson Brigade, paddling six-person voyageur canoes from Alberta to Ontario “to commemorate Thompson’s historic trip of 1808,” a journey also heralded in 1967 with the Centennial Canoe Pageant. How interesting to read about the grueling paddling across Manitoba’s massive lakes (with high winds and just five-minute breaks every hour), group dynamics, and the receptions held in various communities, ie: in Cumberland House, schoolchildren canoed out to greet the contemporary voyageurs and a banquet of “beef stew and bannock” was enjoyed.

Sexsmith’s love of paddling began in 1981 with a short adventure on the Churchill River between Stanley Mission and Nistowiak Falls. The College of Commerce student (ministry came later) and his fellow paddlers “vowed around the campfire that this would be the first of a lifetime of trips”.  That vow was kept, and more than forty years later, he’s still canoe-tripping with these longtime friends, and several others.    

The writer employs a jocular tone. Of a fellow canoe-tripper, he says: “We were warned not to use big words with Bill since he was a kindergarten teacher.” Before an adventure on the Paull River, the group stopped at the Co-op in Air Ronge to buy fishing licences, because “for the last two decades they have given away free sunglasses with the purchase of a fishing licence”. Sexmith selected his “from a wide selection of 1970s styles”.  

After studying theology at Queens—“My classmates always marvelled when I found theological insights in canoeing books, and my practice preaching often included reflections on the joys of canoe-tripping”—Sexsmith’s first United Church posting was in Hudson Bay, ideally “located at the junction of three rivers”. After paddling through the Clearwater River’s “big-ticket scenery,” he wrote: “One simply knew that God was real when travelling in the majesty of the Clearwater Valley”.   

There’s classic Canadian shield camping, “with clean granite sloping gently into the water, making for a perfect swimming hole”. There are bears, caribou, muskox and moose. Wicked whitewater, appalling portages, and “[learning] the art of drinking water through a head net”. 

Simply put, this book is great reading, and you’ll complete these stories knowing with certainty that nature is surely sacred.

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

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

 

 

Four Reviews: Paddling Pathways: Reflections from a Changing Landscape (Edited by Bob Henderson and Sean Blenkinsop); Backwater Mystic Blues by Lloyd Ratzlaff; Small Reckonings by Karin Melberg Schwier; and"awāsi-nēhiyawēwin masinahikanis: A Little Plains Cree Colouring Book—Plains Cree People” by Patricia Deiter, Allen J. (A.J.) Felix, and Elmer Ballantyne, Illustrated by Aleigha Agecoutay

“Paddling Pathways: Reflections from a Changing Landscape”

Edited by Bob Henderson and Sean Blenkinsop

Published by Your Nickel’s Worth Publishing

Review by Shelley A. Leedahl

29.95  ISBN 978-1-988783-81-9

 

This beautifully-bound anthology of 21 essays written by paddlers and edited by educators—and intrepid canoeists and guides—Bob Henderson (ON) and Sean Blenkinsop (BC) deserves a much longer review than this 500-word assessment. In short: it’s extraordinary.

Paddling Pathways: Reflections from a Changing Landscape contains a wealth of thought-provoking essays on the rivers, lakes, and oceans the diverse contributors have navigated via canoe or kayak—often in groups but sometimes solo—and it examines the paddlers’ interior worlds as these contemplate being present; history; culture; relationships with plants, animals and other creatures; Indigenous Canada (land and territorial acknowledgements and “Settler Responsibilities” are included); ecology; climate change; and, as Bruce Cockburn contributes in his Foreword, the “soul-expanding space” where one can get “a glimpse of the world as it was made.” Maps, black and white photos, and the editors’ numerous “Suggested Reading” lists are superb accompaniments to the layered essays.

Henderson has previously published books on heritage travel and outdoor life, and Blenkinsop, a professor at Simon Fraser University who writes about “wild pedagogies” and “ecologizing education,” agree that as travelers on land and water, they/we need to “shift pathways and create narratives that no longer focus on competing, completing, and conquering” re: our understanding of the natural world and, indeed, human culture. They invited contributors to select a “special paddling place/route” and a “personally significant theme,” and the result is this compendium of erudite, entertaining, often philosophical and political essays that are delightful to sink into.    

Several writers discuss the “gifts to be found in slowing down,” ie: the discoveries of cranberries (Anjeanette LeMay) and the “orangish glow of cloudberries” (Beth Foster). Foster writes that wind and rain altered her group’s 9-day paddle plans, but the rewards of “focus[ing] on the present” included “an unclouded blue-sky panoramic vista” and “the profound joy of stillness.”

Greg Scutt ponders Settler history and the connection between river canoeing and fly-fishing in his second-person piece set it Stikine country, “the largest wilderness area in British Columbia.”

Michael Paul Samson recounts his kayak trip around Newfoundland at age 22, a pre-wedding adventure down the Ohio River and into the Mississippi, and “the resilience of the human race.”

Ric Driediger, a guide for Churchill River Canoe Outfitters, was seeking relaxation on his solo trip. He considers that he’s perhaps “so addicted to being busy, [he] can’t just sit,” and he desires to “be lost in time and place and imagination.” Success! At one point he can’t even remember how long he’s been out. This essay’s brilliant surprise ending left me gasping.

Kayaker Fiona Hough speaks honestly of the joys and challenges of taking youth with mental health issues on a two-week trip in Clayoquet Sound, and how one completes the trip “freshly clothed in an ocean skin.”

Gratitude’s braided through these essays. Zabe MacEachren writes: “I also like to kiss the palm of my hand and then place it flat on the ground wherever I have slept.”

This book’s a major achievement. Please read it. 

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

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“Backwater Mystic Blues”

By Lloyd Ratzlaff

Shadowpaw Press Reprise

Review by Shelley A. Leedahl

18.99    ISBN 978-1-989398-60-9

  

I somehow missed Backwater Mystic Blues—the contemplative collection of essays by Saskatoon’s Lloyd Ratzlaff—when it was first published in 2006. Shame on me, for I greatly admired Ratzlaff’s earlier book, The Crow Who Tampered With Time, and bought several copies. And shame on me, as—disclaimer—I call this gracious writer a friend.

Fortunately, fate’s found a way to deliver Ratzlaff’s second essay collection into my hands these many years later, and like a song you’ve not heard in a long time but, upon listening again, remember how much you enjoyed, I’m so pleased to hear the distinguished yet down-home voice of my old Mennonite friend—a former minister, counsellor and educator—once again. Backwater Mystic Blues has been reborn with Shadowpaw Press Reprise, a press that publishes “New editions of notable, previously published books”. Hurray, that.

 These cultivated essays are reminiscences of a life lived with intention, but also with abundant questioning (particularly spiritual) and grief (the dissolution of a marriage, career dissatisfaction, deaths). What you’ll also find here is gentleness, nature keenly observed, scholarship, and page-by-page evidence of a human who walks through this world with a generous heart. Disparate essays are tethered via consistently effective writing, ie: the ability to transport. Here Ratzlaff describes the cellar in his childhood home:

“The one naked light bulb scarcely lit the cellar’s dim edges, where other shelves stood, holding crocks and jars and bronze canning tubs, where potatoes mouldered in the bin in the northeast, darkest corner and the upright hulk of the metal bathtub brooded of Saturdays, when it was wrestled up through the passageway so we could take turns bathing for church on Sunday.”

As a child it was Ratzlaff’s responsibility to fetch water from the village well, two blocks from home, and he writes of the enamel cup he used to dip into the bucket upon its safe return to the cellar. Years later he “salvaged” this blue cup. “It holds the innocence of childhood, and the taste of clean cold tin straight to the gut slakes my soul and puts Time in its place.”  

Ratzlaff was raised in a fundamentalist sect. “In my early teens, it was a big excursion to attend a Youth for Christ rally in Saskatoon,” he writes. Decades of wrestling with “The Old Man up there and his buggers here below” saw Ratzlaff leave a 10-year career in ministry, but he confesses that he’s been “married—for better, for worse, forever—to the Christian religion,” and these essays frequently allude to his faith. The writer also went to Switzerland to honour Carl Jung, gives great consideration to his dream-world, and set aside his King James Bible for the New English Bible (Oxford Study Edition); what falls from the pages of that good Book when it’s reopened years later is nothing short of holy.

Imaginative, educated, a dreamer, and the kind of guy who finds God in “a gaggle of geese on a sandbar”. I’m so glad this book found me.   

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

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“Small Reckonings”

By Karin Melberg Schwier

Published by Shadowpaw Press Reprise

Review by Shelley A. Leedahl

$24.99  ISBN 978-1-989398-74-6

Sometimes a book is so phenomenal it goes into multiple printings, either with the original publisher or with a fresh publisher. Such is the case with Saskatoon author Karin Melberg Schwier’s Small Reckonings, a Watrous, SK-based novel set between 1914 and 1936, and inspired by true events. I reviewed this book—for which the writer received a John V. Hicks Long Manuscript Award for Fiction—when it was first published by Burton House Books in 2020. A revised edition came out in 2021 with Copestone, and that same year it earned a Saskatchewan Book Award. This year, Shadowpaw Press Reprise has released the third edition. This story’s got staying power.

I stand by what I claimed in my initial review: Small Reckonings deserves a huge audience. Kudos to the multi-genre writer, and to Regina publisher (and writer) Edward Willett for recognizing that many well-written books deserve another chance to shine. Excerpts of my earlier review of this beautifully-crafted and highly enjoyable novel also get a reprise:

Melberg Schwier expertly creates individuated characters readers will care deeply about, including the central figure, Violet, who, at birth, looks like “a large pink spider,” and of whom the attending doctor says “‘There are places for these children.’” Equally well-drawn are Violet’s doting brother, John; kind neighbour, Hank; and the Ukrainian Yuzik family. The characters struggle through the Depression, and with the disparate lots they’ve been dealt.

I know Watrous well, thus it was especially fun reading the descriptions of this “boomtown”. Homesteader William boasts that “‘Watrous has wooden sidewalks now, and shops and a bakery. A very decent butcher. A poolroom and barbershop.’” He says the mineral springs possess “‘healing powers, so say the Indians’”. I can smell the “sweet scent of [Scandanavian] rosettes just pulled from hot oil,” and hear the “‘Uff da’” exclamations. I easily see the “green apron with yellow rickrack,” and almost sneeze at the description of the schoolboy “banging erasers at arm’s length on the bottom step, a cloud of chalk dust drifting away lazily in the afternoon heat”. I transported as I read about caragana seed pods “snapping and cracking” in the sunshine, and as the lead siblings spoke of “anti-I-over” and “Simon Says”. The “forlorn autumn sound” of honking geese was like an echo.

This book succeeds because the writer’s learned the difficult art of literary balance … as skilled as she is at penning descriptive scenes, they never slow the pacing of this taut novel. The book’s structure is nuanced, and seemingly minor details—like a fishhook caught in an eye—have resonance. The characters are people we know or can easily imagine. Here’s Hanusia, the raw Ukrainian midwife, upon the birth of John: “‘So quick first baby! Much hair. Strong boy, good for farm work. Your husband, he will be happy.’”) And the plot? Movie potential.

I read with pleasure that Melberg Schwier has a sequel in the works. I have high expectations for Inheriting Violet. Watch for news of its release at karinschwier.ca.

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

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awāsi-nēhiyawēwin masinahikanis: A Little Plains Cree Colouring Book—Plains 

Cree People”

Written by Patricia Deiter, Allen J. (A.J.) Felix, and Elmer Ballantyne

Illustrated by Aleigha Agecoutay

Published by YNWP

Review by Shelley A. Leedahl

$24.95  ISBN 978-1-77869-013-6

 

It’s been said that when a language dies, a culture goes with it. In Canada several Indigenous languages are in fact endangered, but the one I grew up hearing in northern Saskatchewan—Cree—remains one of the most widely spoken Indigenous languages in the country. Still, it’s important to continue teaching it so Cree youth can connect with their ancestors, their history, and cultural traditions. I’ll add that it’s also a fine idea for anyone who lives in northern communities to learn at least a few words of Cree; my parents took classes because they lived alongside and worked with Plains Cree people. I picked up a small vocabulary, as well, mostly from friends who lived on Flying Dust First Nation.

I’m glad that there are educators, Elders, and Knowledge Keepers who continue to find creative ways to make learning Plains Cree fun for children. Patricia Deiter, Allen J. (A.J.) Felix, and Elmer Ballantyne, the three Saskatchewan writers of awāsi-nēhiyawēwin masinahikanis: A Little Plains Cree Colouring Book—Plains Cree People, have done just that. The 55-page colouring book is a complement to their reference guide for teaching the Plains Cree language, nēhiyawēwin awāsi-masinahikanis—A Little Plains Cree Book for Children, published by YNWP in 2022, and Deiter, from the Peepeekisis Cree Nation, introduces the book by explaining that they “hope to provide children with the basics of the Plains Cree language with the goal that we, as Plains Cree people, will still have our language for future generations”. The Plains Cree translation is credited to Felix and Ballantyne, plus Inez Deiter, “a Residential School survivor who had to relearn her Cree language”.

The book is simply (no facial features and mostly no finger definition) but effectively illustrated by Aleigha Agecoutay, also from the Peepeekisis Cree Nation. A figure or figures appear on each page, and they are identified by who they are, ie: a child (awāsis), an old man (kisēyiniw), and/or by their profession, ie: a teacher (okiskinwahamākēw), a fisherman (onochikinasewew). The large black line drawings feature floral bead work, braids, regalia, long earrings and horses, and many would be best coloured in pencil crayons, as crayons would be too thick for some of the finer details, ie: the doctor and nurse’s stethoscopes, and the bells on the dancer’s jingle dress.

The creators have included good information about their people and language, ie: the fact that the Cree nation is “Canada’s largest tribal group,” “Plains Cree is spoken in 43 First Nations communities in Saskatchewan alone,” and “Everyone older than the speaker will have a specific term, but anyone younger than the speaker will be addressed as nisīmis (my younger brother or sister)”. There’s a page included on the Plains Crees’ extended kinship system—interesting—and pages dedicated to the “Sound system” (14 consonants, 7 vowels) and colours.

Hats off to these collaborators for doing their part in keeping the Plains Cree language alive and well, and doing it in a way that little learners will love. kinanāskomitināwāw—thank you!  

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

 

 

Three Reviews: On the Busy Old Ranch (written by Katelyn Toney, illustrated by Rebecca Allen); The Foxholes at the Borders of Sofa Cushions (by Counce Brampton); and The History Forest (by Michael Trussler)

“On the Busy Old Ranch”

Written by Katelyn Toney, Illustrated by Rebecca Allen

Published by Bluestem Books

Review by Shelley A. Leedahl

$15.00  ISBN 978-1-7388027-0-8

 

Katelyn Toney lives the hectic farmer/rancher lifestyle near Tompkins in southwest Saskatchewan with her husband and four children, and when she noted a lack of children’s books that depict the family’s unique way of life, she wrote one. The illustrated board book, On the Busy Old Ranch, is a 1-10 counting book with full-bleed illustrations by Rebecca Allen, rhyming stanzas, and child-friendly but apt portrayals of diverse ranch families’ chore-filled daily life.

In a CTV Regina television interview, Toney said she’d been reading to her kids “every day for the past 15 years,” and noted that there were “not a lot of books showcasing the life we live out here raising cattle on the prairies”. She said that there are many farm and rodeo-themed kids’ books, but what she found “really didn’t depict the lifestyle” she and her family experience.

The first page spread sets the book’s tone and two-stanza, rhyming style:

On the busy old ranch

by the barn in the sun

worked a big mama cowgirl

and her little cowgirl one.

 

“Feed,” said the mama.

“I feed,” said the one.

So they both fed the horses

by the barn in the sun.

 

Allen’s colourful, light-hearted illustrations reveal a large-eyed mother and daughter, both with red braids, forking hay and feeding the smiling horse, while another horse munches grass against a backdrop of prairie sky and a tall red barn. The subsequent pages all begin with “On the busy old ranch,” and include “an old papa cowboy,” “the ranchhand lady,” “the silly auntie cowgirl” and “some kindly neighbours/and some little cowkids ten”. I was pleased to see the illustrator’s inclusion of solar power for heating water and the multi-ethnic cast of characters. Details like an old boot slung on a fencepost, a grasshopper, and tumbleweeds caught in barbed wire are familiar sights to this prairie-born and raised reviewer.

Toney’s lively text reveals the many daily responsibilities on the ranch—like fixing water bowls, loading cattle into a trailer “through the liner’s rolling door,” and pounding nails into barbed wire fencing—but there are also pages dedicated to rest (all characters and the family dog are shown sleeping on the grass beneath a gold-leafed tree); fun (swinging on the “old rusty gate”), and prayer “And they all prayed for rain/under clouds that reached to heaven”. In the cute illustration for the latter, even the gopher has its hands clasped in prayer.

During the CTV interview, Toney said the book is “a love story” to the people involved in farmer/ranching, and to the lifestyle itself. Her website adds that the story is “perfect for rural kids who want to read a story familiar with their way of life, as well as kids who would like to learn about life on a ranch”.

The small and sturdy hardcover is ideal for little hands—and beginning counters—and includes a plug for bedtime reading. To learn more about Toney and her first book—I’m certain there are more tales to come—see www.KatelynToney.ca.

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

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“The Foxholes at the Borders of Sofa Cushions”

By Counce Brampton

Published by Your Nickel’s Worth Publishing

Review by Shelley A. Leedahl

$19.95  ISBN 978-1-988783-99-4

 

They say it’s about the journey, not the reward. In the literary world, the reward might be considered the publication of a book. For Saskatoon poet Counce Brampton, a “quiet observer of life” who’s lived most of his adulthood in a group home (as a result of OCD and other mental health issues), my sense is that it’s always been about the journey, yet his first poetry collection, The Foxholes at the Borders of Sofa Cushions, has been published, and it opens with a generous introduction by his friend and mentor, internationally-revered writer Yann Martel.

Martel began meeting with Brampton when the former was serving as writer-in-residence at the Saskatoon Public Library twenty years ago. The Life of Pi author quickly gleaned that Brampton wasn’t seeking “editorial guidance but affirmation and validation”. Martel continues to provide that today, and explains that “This book is the result of a wish to safeguard what is essentially Counce Brampton’s life work, the mark he will leave”.

Interestingly, the poems appear next to images of their first incarnations, handprinted in Brampton’s coiled notebook. Where words or lines were struck from the first draft, they appear with strikelines on the typed pages, as well. Martel’s editing is deliberately slight: “What we have here are the spontaneous workings of [Brampton’s] mind, the words and phrases that strike him, the ideas that spring fully formed and those that evolve from one draft to the next”.

I’m immediately drawn to the first poem’s strong images and sensory details. “In the Back of a Seaport Tavern,” includes “A seal’s corpse on a woodplank/gouged and steaming like fresh asphalt” and “An old bedspring against the yardfence/rusted and corrupted by old sea salt”. The idea of a bedspring being “corrupted” is inspired.

The poems feel like dreamspeak, like journal entries. Line are repeated throughout, but “The repetition is part of the spell,” Martel writes. “The point here is not destination but movement, a ramble through language.”

We see the poet experimenting on the page: some lines—and even words—are left incomplete. The piece “In a room filled with dim ghostlight” (great title) begins thus:

In a room filled with ghostlight

 

In a room filled with dim ghostlight

 

In a dim filled

 

The second line reappears—like a ghost—across the next two pages, or contains slight variation: “In a room filled with nothing and dim ghostlight”.

On one page, "when” is the sole word. Another of the briefest offerings is an untitled list of five words: doorway/streetlight/fender/seashell/drum. Other poems do indeed “ramble through language,” and what gorgeous language it sometimes is: “The sun shone down/with a light, italian orange sustenance/on all the townspeople”. And “the full moon made of fresh pale stone”. I admire “all our hands held the dust of dreams and crumbled icons” (from “Of failure”).

The book’s beautifully produced. The cover is a photo of a worn leather couch in tall grass beside a river. Logical? Perhaps not, but like Brampton’s work, it’s compelling all the same.  

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

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“The History Forest”

By Michael Trussler

Published by University of Regina Press

Review by Shelley A. Leedahl

$19.95  ISBN 9-780889-778948

   

 

Books by multi-genre writer and University of Regina professor of English Michael Trussler make a mark. Take The Sunday Book, a nonfiction title that garnered two awards in the 2023 Saskatchewan Book Awards. Take The History Forest, the poetry collection for which Trussler earned the Poetry Award in the same provincial competition. An admirable trifecta.  

I read the latter slowly, and twice: it’s dense, philosophical, apocalyptic, and often surreal, and I didn’t always know how to navigate it—something like walking through a forest under the cape of night. To read Trussler is to have one’s mind stretched; I even remembered things I’d forgotten, ie: The Twinkie Defence. This dexterous poet quotes myriad poets and writers; references artworks and philosophers; and had me regularly Googling (ie: Panpyschism; Ordovician; ekistics; hand-wrestler Candy Pain; Zen monk, Kenkō). Even the line and stanza breaks kept me guessing in this experimental book.

In Trussler’s poetic universe, a strong sense of humanity’s vulnerability pervades—and the sturdy conviction that we’ve doomed ourselves. There’s a “gasoline haze/above the playground” and “peripatetic plastic straws/washed up on the sand,” will “last far longer than your great-/grandchildren”. Civilization is “blistered and botched”. God is here, and equally fearful: “And it may/well be that the only thing I’ll regret, says God to himself, is/having never run away from home. But where/to hide amidst all this life that’s heaving?” I don’t know, and Trussler doesn’t pretend to either.

Time appears to be one of the characters in this globally-aware collection. “In Japan they’ve made a skating rink/of crushed centuries and untold/species of fish,” he writes. In a later poem: “Arctic ice very soon making room for better cables for instant digital connection between Tokyo and London”. And in the piece “Salvador Dali and the Glacier,” Trussler asserts that “Ice is losing its various/names and it’s not only avian malaria that’s on the rise”.

Striking juxtapositions and stream-of-consciousness are at constant, startling play. In a single poem one finds pencil crayons and a Zip-loc bag; heroin and “sky-blue vodka bottles;” a “rain-rusted/wheelbarrow asleep on the heath” and “the Youtube cry of peacocks, flamingoes,/humpback whales, and antelopes as lithe as wind farms in/Germany”. Yes, “something wyrd is all around”.

The book’s final section is an essay titled “Bodhisattva on a Bicycle,” and it begins: “Appearing from nowhere, the world sometimes catches itself within various mirrors. It takes luck to open them, and then to listen to what’s gathered inside.” Mirrors play an ongoing role in this pensive collection. Trussler examines himself, history, the natural world, the environment, and contemporary society in the looking glass, and explores “what it means to be alive in this increasingly contradictory and frightening era in human history”.    

This original, award-winning poet observes, he questions, he reveres birds. Owls (one’s featured on the cover), mourning doves, oystercatchers, swallows, red-breasted nuthatches, a “grey cockatiel,” grebes, bluebirds …  “Birds aren’t here to give me any kind of grace,/but they do give grace, they make me feel part of the world again.”

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