Two Book Reviews: Shimmers of Light: New and Selected Poems by Robert Currie and Baba Sophie's Ukrainian Cookbook, Written by Marion Mutala, Illustrated by Wendy Siemens

“Shimmers of Light: New and Selected Poems”

Written by Robert Currie

Published by Thistledown Press

Review by Shelley A. Leedahl

$24.95  ISBN 978-1-77187-218-8

    

Multi-genre Moose Jaw writer Robert Currie has been an integral contributor to the Saskatchewan literary scene for as far back as I can remember, and I’ve been reading – and enjoying – his poetry and stories across the decades. Currie’s also worked hard behind the scenes as an educator, Saskatchewan Writers’ Guild board member, and founding board member of the Saskatchewan Festival of Words. He’s also headed the Saskatchewan Writers’ Guild. In short, Currie’s earned his Saskatchewan Lieutenant Governor’s Award for Lifetime Achievement in the Arts.

I’m so pleased that Thistledown Press has released a “Best Of” collection of Currie’s poems. Shimmers of Light: New and Selected Poems is an attractive highlight reel that begins with a glowing essay by poetry veteran Lorna Crozier. She lauds Currie for position[ing] his poems in the local” and “find[ing] a way to rhapsodize the prairies without ignoring its starkness, its closeness to elemental things, and the long, long months of cold.”

Nine sections are dedicated to previous poetry collections (including chapbooks), and New Poems – what I’m especially interested in - begin on page 211 of this novel-sized book. In the new work, Currie continues to mine the rich territory of his childhood and adolescence in Moose Jaw. There are family and sporting memories, including a recollection of racism against a ballplayer in his poem “The Old Ball Game,” and many of the poems make mention of the music that impacted the poet, ie: The Gaylords, Pat Boone, Gene Autry, Elvis Presley, and Johnny Cash.

Currie makes poetry of his first job as a teen: he worked at a feed lot “forcing cattle into the shoot, a needle jabbed into their haunches/while [he] attacked those with horns, sliding a two-by-four/over their necks to hold them, then straining at the/dehorning tool, horns lopped off, steers bawling.”  

These mostly nostalgic poems recount scenes of visceral gore and also frequent tenderness. I smiled at the thought of the kids in “Back Then” who raided gardens, yes, but they did this “with care and predetermined rules/two carrots each, always from different rows.” I could see Currie as a tree-climbing child, hands “sticky with sap” while he watched “the whole world turn below.”

People do things in these variously-styled poems. They walk, rake, play sports, read, watch movies, “dance on the band of broken pavement” beside the highway and “[ache] with love, honour friendships, and, in the pieces from the powerful “Klondike Fever” section, they “go blind with staring,” because “Everywhere on the glacier/snow burns in the sun.”       

In poet Mark Abley’s Afterword, he discusses Currie’s poetics and how Currie often “begins with an apparently straightforward memory and turns it into something unexpected, almost magical.” I agree.

 When I’d reached the book’s end I flipped to the first poem again, “Poet’s Walk,” and read: “bright as blood upon the brambles/as the blackness shoulders in.” Even in his earliest work, I see this poet was doing a kind of singing. We need more singing. And the world could use more Bob Curries.   

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

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“Baba Sophie’s Ukrainian Cookbook”

Written by Marion Mutala, Illustrated by Wendy Siemens

Published by Millennium Marketing

Review by Shelley A. Leedahl

$24.95  ISBN 978-1-7773713-3-3

 

I’m no great wonder in the kitchen and if I am cooking I usually turn to the internet for recipes. Recently, however, I’ve started buying cookbooks. Two reasons for this: firstly, each time I click on a recipe online I have to wade through paragraphs of unnecessary text (ie: “My uncle Bob just loves these blackberry muffins”) before the author even gets to the ingredients, and secondly, I just love actual books, and seeing the recipe on a printed page - often beside a photograph of whatever I’m attempting to make - feels like the right tact.   

I was thus duly pleased when Marion Mutala’s latest book arrived in my mailbox, because this time the prolific and award-winning Saskatchewan writer has penned Baba Sophie’s Ukrainian Cookbook. I’ve previously reviewed Mutala’s excellent children’s books and poetry, and I know that from the words to the design, production to the print, this would be a quality book, and downright practical, too (and I need all the help I can get).

The Sophie of the title is Mutala’s mother, Sophie Marie (née Dubyk) Mutala (1918-2007), who was born near Mayfair, SK. The book’s dedicated to Sophie, and her daughter’s penned a one-page, glowing tribute. Sophie was “born with a bag of flour in one hand and a Kaiser deck in the other” Mutala writes, explaining that even as a child Sophie helped her mother bake and “make perogies, wash clothes on a washboard, cut wood with her brother using a double-handed saw, fill mattresses with clean hay to sleep on, and make feather quilts.”

Yes, it was a different time, but the recipes that follow include “Ukrainian Specialties, Breads, Main Courses, Desserts, and Beverages” that have stood the test of generations and are considered mainstays for many, even Norwegian-German-Irish Canadians, like me. There’s also a section called Canning and Preservatives, and a Miscellaneous section, which includes two recipes I’ll not need – for Cooked Playdough and Sugar Starch for Doilies, and two I will: Non-Toxic Drain Clog Remover and Stain Remover.

Reading through this cookbook reminded me of visiting Ukrainian friends as a girl in rural Saskatchewan. There are recipes for Perogies, Pyrohy, Varenyky; Holubsti (Cabbage Rolls); and Borsch. It was also like going to a community supper, where Carrot Loaf, Potato Casserole, and Saskatoon Berry Pie are up for grabs. There are also many original recipes included here, like Sophie’s Homemade Noodles and Mama’s Cookies. The dessert section is the largest in the book, and I think I gained weight just reading these scrumptious recipes!

There’s also a nod to the familiar, Rosettes, which my Norwegian grandmother made every Christmas, and in the Bread section, Mutala’s included “Bannock (In the Spirit of Truth and Reconciliation)”.

Each page is bordered in a colourful Ukrainian-stitch graphic, and recipe sections are fronted by a colour food photograph. I’m pleased to own this book, and I’ll be putting it to use – the Low Calorie Soup recipe looks tasty and would be a good budget meal – this week.

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

 

 

Three Reviews: Blue Moon, Red Herring by Angeline Schellenberg; The Poetry & Lyrics of Jay Semko by Jay Semko; and Race to Finish by Marion Mutala

 “Blue Moon, Red Herring”

Written by Angeline Schellenberg

Published by JackPine Press

Review by Shelley A. Leedahl

$30.00  ISBN 978-1-927035-39-9

  

Clever, layered, original, fun. These words leap to mind after reading Winnipeg poet Angeline Schellenberg’s colourful limited-edition chapbook—bound to resemble a paint swatch—Blue Moon, Red Herring.  Each of the twenty-five prose poems in this 2019 collection were inspired by a colour, and the colours themselves appear where a Contents page normally would. No need for titles when the paint-chip colours do the work, and each poem’s colour-matched with its sample. What results is candy—for the eye and the mind.  

Schellenberg employs a kind of controlled stream-of-consciousness in these delightful and deceptively simple poems, but don’t be fooled: much research went into this. My best analogy: microwaved popcorn. The poet’s hue-inspired thoughts seem to pop around, but they stay “in the bag” of her theme, and each poem’s written in a single controlled paragraph. Colours aside, Schellenberg’s myriad references are gleaned from art, literature, science, nature, religion, history, philosophy, pop culture, advertising slogans, cliché’s and personal experience, and this rich gallery of inspirations makes for genius mélanges.

In “Magenta” she writes: “like soul mates and democracy, magenta exists only in your mind”. We also get a miniature history lesson: “The French dye, christened for the fuchsia flower, was renamed for Napoleon III’s victory near Magenta, Italy”.  Her piece “Chartreuse” demonstrates her wild juxtapositions: the colour “coats the roots of grass you chewed at recess,” it’s “the heart of an avocado,” and it’s “the VW van we could push-start to Mexico, a bed of Scotch moss where you could lay me down”.

It's often the final line of a poem that matters most; get it right, as in the “VW/Mexico/Scotch moss” line above, and the whole poem sings. Schellenberg’s also been published by the venerable Brick Books and her work’s earned much critical attention; she knows the import of endings—and wit. “Grey” ends with: “It’s what comes out in the wash. It takes no responsibility for teenaged boredom, or ashen faces aging with regret”. “Beige” is “Less kinky than khaki”.  And, still on “Beige”: “Comfy as dumplings and oatmeal, while they say you can be beiged to death, deep down you know it would be completely painless”.  

 More highlights: “Maroon” is “old blood” and “your Valentine bouquet by March”.“Black” is “Any depressed typewriter key, the raised flag of punk and piracy”. “Orange” recalls “A Fanta on the cabin step, the pulled Fortrel curtains in a rocking van”.  Among several other things, “White” spawns “a president’s home” and “the satin clinging to your ankles at your first communion”.

In “Purple” there are literary references (“and when I am old, I shall purr” and, for kids, “Dora’s backpack”) and an allusion to an old song (“One-eyed, one-horned, hazy and a heart of courage”).

“Red” is especially good and nuanced. It includes “The rainbow’s highest arc to trace the words of Christ,” “A can of bull says charge it” (triple-entendre?), and it “Fan’s revolution’s fame”.  

This book gets all the stars for originality and wordplay. I wish I’d written it.

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

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“The Poetry & Lyrics of Jay Semko”

By Jay Semko

Published by Wood Dragon Books

Review by Shelley A. Leedahl

$19.99   ISBN 9-781989-078631

 

“She ain’t pretty she just looks that way.” If you’re a Canadian of a certain age, there’s a good chance you’ll recognize that lyric from the song “She Ain’t Pretty” by The Northern Pikes, a Saskatchewan-based band that rose to popularity in the 1980s and still records. The Pikes’ bassist and a vocalist, Jay Semko, also penned many of the band’s songs, and now he’s released a book that’s “a mixture of song lyrics and ‘stand alone’ poems written over a 25-year period”.

The Poetry & Lyrics of Jay Semko begins with the artist’s abbreviated autobiography. Jay Semko was bullied as a grade-accelerated child in rural Saskatchewan; became passionate about learning guitar and writing songs in his teens; and enjoyed career success both with The Northern Pikes and as a solo artist (ten albums plus music composition for film and television). We also meet the Jay Semko who is “a recovering addict … living with Bipolar Disorder”. Sharing his experience “helps [him] immensely, and is crucial to [his] own personal recovery”.

 “Write what you know” is a common literary adage and Semko—who’s done much touring—does indeed steer us across the map of his experience. Many of these offerings feature movement and a desire for change, and I suspect they may have been written on the road. In the opening piece we read “the odyssey continues/ghosts of the deer I have killed on the highway/will come back to haunt me,” and “make up new words/draw a new roadmap” appears in the next selection. In “Adventure on My Breath,” Semko writes Siberia/at least that’s how it seems/in a greyhound skating down a highway”.

The singer/songwriter frequently alludes to mental health issues, and alcohol addiction’s another demon he’s wrestled with. “Detox, rehab, and psychiatric centres” are a part of Semko’s map; writing about life’s valleys is good therapy. “Heartaches and Numbers” begins “you roam these halls every night/the paintings all seem to be haunted”. It includes: “in a couple of days/you’ll feel so much better/the shakes will wear off”.  In the notes that follow the poems/songs, Semko shares that this track from 2010 was written while he was “jonesing, trying to stay cool,” and “addiction [is] personified in this song”.  

The collection includes a few love poems and pieces about faith and aging, but the death of Semko’s mother is what informed the most touching of these diverse works. In “My Mother in the Hospital” he recounts how difficult it was to be on tour “with a busload of other ancient former vagabonds/preparing to rock across the nation” while his mother was dealing with terminal illness and was on the home/hospital/palliative care train. “St. Paul’s/mom now in a coma/the hospital death lady/explaining much too pleasantly/the science and the inevitable”.

Many of these poems document the artist’s darkness, but I expect readers will finish the book feeling pleased that they got to know the Jay Semko who’s survived stormy seas—like all of us—and lives to write and sing about them.   

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

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“Race to Finish”

By Marion Mutala

Published by Millenium Marketing

Review by Shelley A. Leedahl

$19.99  ISBN 9-781777-371319

 

Marion Mutala is a literary machine, with sixteen published books and more on the way. I’ve previously reviewed two of her children’s books—Grateful and the 175-page, multi-story achievement, Baba’s Babushka. The Saskatchewan writer’s latest title, Race to Finish, is a poetry collection, dedicated to the Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls (MMIWG); the First Nations children buried in unmarked, residential school graves across Canada; and the Black Lives Matter movement. It begins with a foreword by artist Kevin L. Peeace, who relays the experience of presenting in an elementary school and being asked by a young student: “What was it like being at the residential school?” Peeace also provided the compelling black and white cover drawing of a bisected face: one half representing the bricks and tears of the residential school experience, the other representative of his peoples’ connection to the land and familial love—at least that’s my interpretation.   

Mutala’s poems champion racial equality, gratitude, positivity, and God, as well as personal experience, ie: “the old wooden cookstove on the/farm when I was a child” (from “Reminds Me”). Not every poem is rosy, however. In “God’s Tricks” she acknowledges that “life happens”: “A little of this and a lot of that and too soon/We are in high school dragging our butts around,/Tired, wanting to sleep the days away and party/the nights”. And as life continues, we eventually “look old and tired” and “Our spirit is fried like a parched desert”.

The writers chooses various styles and structures: some pieces rhyme, some are a single stanza, and some, like the prosaic “Envision,” read like miniature pep talks: “Why not envision the best city in Saskatchewan, in Canada, in the entire world?”  “Plain Lucky”—dedicated to the late writer Wes Funk­—contains the everyday dialogue of two friends enjoying coffee together.  The piece “Don’t You Think?” repeats the opening line and adds another with each new stanza. It begins: “I think if you stand in front of a church with a/Bible held high in your hand, you should open/it,” and in progressive stanzas the writer advises said Bible-holder/s to read and “use” the words of 1 Corinthians 13:4-8.   

Mutala writes from the perspective of one who is “white privileged,” and she should be commended for addressing systemic racism in these poems, many of which blatantly articulate that “Black Lives and Indigenous Lives Matter”. She encourages “other white privileged” folks to speak up about racial injustice and persecution based on sexual orientation. “Do not be silent!” she heralds. “Smarten up!”

This small book includes an “Open Dialogue” featuring eight questions, ie: “What are things people can do to promote reconciliation?” and “What are things people can do to stop homophobia?” and invites readers to share their stories “so we can listen, understand, and change to make life better”. It concludes with a “Resources” section.

A portion of this book’s proceeds go to Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls.

Want to learn more about the prolific Mutala? Visit www.babasbabushka.ca .

 

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

 

 

 

Two Reviews: Table for Four by Eccentric Crops (Colin Smith, Jennifer Still, Steven Ross Smith, Ted Landrum) and kireji: partial portraits & biofictions by christian favreau

“Table for Four”

Written by Eccentric Crops (Colin Smith, Jennifer Still, Steven Ross Smith, Ted Landrum)

Published by JackPine Press

Review by Shelley A. Leedahl

$30.00  ISBN 978-1-927035-40-5

 

 

JackPine Press has been challenging traditional ideas re: what constitutes a book since the press’s inception, and with Table for Four, written by the four-poet collaborative Eccentric Crops—Colin Smith, Jennifer Still, Steven Ross Smith, and Ted Landrum—JackPine once again reimagines “book” and gives us an imaginative, multi-media chapbook, about the size of a bread and butter plate. Fittingly, this tasteful chapbook features a red coaster on the front cover and comes with a large red and white checked napkin folded inside a back flap that’s held in place with sturdy toothpicks. Also included: concrete poems, drawings, and a mostly black image with white pinpoints, titled “napkin braille”. Different? Indeed! Welcome to JackPine Press.  

This collaborative project’s interesting on numerous levels. Firstly, contributor Jennifer Still, from Winnipeg, co-founded JackPine Press in 2002, and in her own work she “[explores] the intersections of language and material forms”. Both Still and Saskatoon’s Steven Ross Smith have worked with sound poetry, and both also publish with traditional publishers. Poet Colin Smith, in Winnipeg, was previously “strongly allied to the Kootenay school of Writing in Vancouver” and last published Multiple Bippies (2014). The fourth member of this poetic quartet, Ted Landrum, teaches at the University of Manitoba and participated in another collaborative chapbook project in 2018. A diverse group.   

I began reading these experimental poems in the order they appear and noted several words repeated in consecutive poems, ie: ass, code, harpoon, migraine, falling, flutter(hand), heart, fistful(l), shaped, meteoric, nature, offer(s), sips(s), orchids, shamble(s), stretch, thin, veil, stitch(ed) and breath, and I wondered if the poets selected these words in advance and gave themselves the task of creating their own individual poems around them, or if each poem was in fact a collaboration. I flipped to the back and read the poets’ explanation about “What Happened”: “Steven invited us to make text together. We decided to work with quoted material. We imagined ourselves sitting at the cardinal points of a table. Jennifer suggested we pass versions around, widdershins. Numerous constraints were occasionally obeyed.” I also learned that Still “cut out every line of the sixteen line Ur-text and wove them into a grid [resembling a tablecloth] because she was interested in weaving”. The quotations for the former were drawn from disparate places, from T.S. Eliot’s work to “Claudio at University of Manitoba, Gym Locker Room, July 10, 2017”.

Clearly, these poets were having great fun, and each member of this “eccentric” quartet shares a poetic interest in “undermining convention”. The sounds of words prevail over meaning here, at least for this reader, ie: in the poem “DIVERSIA CHART” we read: “inner tango can coin top line snarl” and “legal space race rumble legs love testing radios”.  Sound words are prevalent, ie: “thin/whine,” “Birds honk bright code,” “hum low,” and “oinking”. Alliteration abounds, especially in the poem “AIR” with its alphabetical alliteration, ending with “Wilderness sings within without”.

The chapbook’s a hoot on the page, but these works deserve a microphone and a stage.

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

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“kireji: partial portraits & biofictions”

Written by christian favreau

Published by JackPine Press

Review by Shelley A. Leedahl

$30.00  ISBN 9781927035436

 

I have a special interest in reviewing “first” books, in part because it’s been thirty-one years since my own first book was published, and though I’ve followed up with another dozen titles, I still meet folks who claim they liked my first book best.

Today I read Montreal writer christian favreau’s first book. Kireji: partial portraits & biofictions is an attractive, hand-sewn chapbook with a cover image of a bird. The book contains nine free verse poems, a business card-sized note to “Please be gentle while handling,” and four actual leaves. Leaves? Now that’s a new one for me, but JackPine Press is all about originality, and favreau’s work definitely fits the press’s mandate to “publish chapbooks whose form and content are both artistically integrated and unique”.

What did I find? Firstly, like fellow Canadian poet bpNichol—whom favreau quotes in the opening poem, which is comprised solely of three epigraphs—this new poet also sometimes eschews punctuation. In his second poem, “the finch,” he writes “Id dreamt/Id screamed/all the while unheard,” and he includes a measure of treble clef notes, perhaps to emulate the finch’s song. The poem concerns “relying only on one/self” and how “cutting out the others is an act of self/preservation”.  

Family and how one makes his/her original way in the world seem to be themes: “I learn to refuse to fly/in linear fashion/to flit while you blink” he writes in “to my parents”. In this poem two of the poet’s subjects of interest merge: birds and independence. “I must fight the urge:/ to fall—/needing you/not to chew my food”. I loved “the blue sky’s enticing fishhook” in this inquisitive poem that asks “what is?/how can?” and “why that?/ why not?”.

 I’m intrigued and delighted by the creative use of colour in these pieces. We read about “the snow-petaled whites between her lids” and “red azaleas bloomed in the cracks of my lips” in the long poem “me (first) / river of forgetfulness”. This is an environmental poem, with numerous references to nature, place (“stawamus and its rock-formed apron”), climate change (“unpredictable rainfall” and “oh, the heat/rises two degrees”), and the part humans play in the planet’s destruction (“blackbird, lift your frequency/drown the sound of spade/on rock”). The focus on the environment’s a natural fit for favreau, who is a climate justice organizer as well as a writer.

 While reading this thoughtful, introspective book, I turned to Wikipedia to learn what kireji means: “kireji (lit. "cutting word") are a special category of words used in certain types of Japanese traditional poetry [like Haiku]… … Used in the middle of a verse, [kireji] briefly cuts the stream of thought, indicating that the verse consists of two thoughts half independent of each other”.     

Finally, what’s a first book without a love poem or two? The poet writes “we were singing/the same aria/I like to think” but on the same page we find this tender and “just right” image concerning loss: “a hand on a wrist/holding gently/letting go”.

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

 

 

 

 

Five Reviews: The Beautiful Place by Lee Gowan; Only If We’re Caught by Theressa Slind; Don’t They KICK When You Do That? Stories of a Prairie Veterinarian by Dr. Gary Hoium; Grandpa’s Garage by Amber Antymniuk; and Stories from the Churchill by Ric Driediger, with Illustrations by Paul Mason

“The Beautiful Place”

Written by Lee Gowan

Published by Thistledown Press

Review by Shelley A. Leedahl

$24.95  ISBN 978-1-77187-208-9

  

Saskatchewan born-and-raised writer Lee Gowan has penned a thick new novel—The Beautiful Place—and it’s a beautiful thing. Gowan’s three previous novels have garnered much attention (Make Believe Love was shortlisted for Ontario’s Trillium Award), and his screenplay, Paris or Somewhere, was nominated for a Gemini Award. Currently the Program Director of the Creative Writing and Business Communications department at the University of Toronto School of Continuing Studies, this award-winning author’s giving readers something completely different with The Beautiful Place, which delves into the sci-fi world of cryonics; the realistic world of failed marriages, 21^st Century parenting, and dementia; and the ever-precarious world of art and art-making.  

What Gowan’s done here is ingenious: he’s imagined an ongoing life for Philip Bentley, Sinclair Ross’s protagonist in As for Me and My House. Gowan’s tri-provincial sequel to that prairie classic’s told from the perspective of the minister-turned-artist’s grandson, also known as Bentley. The younger Bentley—a fired, semi-suicidal cryonics salesman, writer, and father of two daughters from different wives—is approached by a beguiling woman named Mary Abraham who “met Jesus in a dream and walked with him to a desert well” and “met Buddha under a tree by a river.”

Abraham’s also dreamed about the younger Bentley, and she’s on a mission: as he’s one of few who know where the cryonics company, Argyle, keeps the frozen bodies of the deceased, he must reveal this location so that she can extract her late husband’s disembodied head, because he posthumously told her that he “wished to be buried and that it was [her] duty to get him underground.” The younger Bentley must also try to appease his wise-cracking ex-wife and finance their rebellious 23-year-old daughter’s New York art school, plus figure out his own place in the world as the grandson of a famous painter (whose body’s also in The Beautiful Place). Bentley himself doesn’t believe in cryonics—“a longshot gamble at eternal life”—even though he was Argyle’s sales manager.

It’s complicated, as they say, but, Gowan adeptly directs this cast of disparate characters with their strange plights, and the often witty dialogue reveals why he’s such a revered writer. Upon the birth of a daughter, Bentley’s wife says: “She looks like a live roast.” Another character says “urologists always have such lovely personalities.” Speaking of his wife’s TV-star ex, the protagonist says: “He wishes he were indigenous; he wishes he were gay.” And it’s a hoot to read that Philip Bentley lived beyond Ross’s novel and became an artist with “pictures hanging in the Vancouver Art Gallery next to Emily Carr.”

This book is a complex weaving of the real and the impossible, of hope and grief, and of dreams and hard realities. Though the protagonist believes that “The point of existence … was to vanish with as little trace as possible. Stay out of the frame,” this shimmering and beautifully-organized novel will ensure that its author, Lee Gowan, will not disappear within the lexicon of Canadian literary writers.

 

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

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“Only If We’re Caught”

Written by Theressa Slind

Published by Thistledown Press

Review by Shelley A. Leedahl

$25.95  ISBN 9-781771-872119

 

In the opening paragraph of Only If We’re Caught, the debut short story collection by Saskatoon writer (and children’s librarian) Theressa Slind, readers are viscerally transported to Aspen Grove, a seniors’ residence—where the hallway “is painted the colour of cookie dough”—and into the mind of Parkinson’s-afflicted protagonist Margaret, who can no longer speak. We soon learn that Margaret’s not just any ninety-three-year-old nursing home resident with a “porous-boned spine curling in on itself” … she’s also telepathically communicating with a visiting child.

This bizarre circumstance is typical of the tales in Slind’s collection of fifteen stories, some of which previously appeared in literary journals. The borders of normalcy are blurred, and that’s what makes this collection stand out. Perhaps the finest example of this is “Amygdule,” about a funeral director, Ben, who “commune[s] with ghosts.” Ben has a crush on his employee, Alice, who delivers a fountain of black humour. She “arrives in an eddy of formaldehyde,” and says things like “I like my men ripe” and “Back to work. Mrs. Chan isn’t going to embalm herself.” This story is also about a treasure hunt, geology, a fatal accident, and loneliness.    

The common thread between Slind’s characters is that they all have crosses to bear. Pregnant teen Natalie had wanted to go to medical school: “But by the time she’d raised the kid and Andy, well, did they even let you into medical school past thirty?” And Toba, a children’s librarian whose only child “climbed a neighbour’s two-storey aluminum ladder, fell, and died.” After the tragedy, guilt-and grief-ridden Toba takes to hiding behind a hare mask (“This is no Easter Bunny”), both inside the library and out. When she’s asked to do a TV interview on a sexual health information fair­—titled “Sex in the Library”—the now semi-famous (thanks to her Twitter account, “@Hareofthefields,” and Youtube) librarian wears the mask. The interviewer metaphorically traps her with his question: “Tell me, Bunny, what’s with the mask? Let’s get to the bottom of this. What are you hiding?”

Readers cannot guess which direction Slind’s going to take them in this original short story collection, and that’s a good thing. Some of the situations made this reader squirm, like realtor and father Martin Woodrow’s uncomfortable reality in the story “Family Style”. Woodrow and his wife are about to have dinner with their daughter Amanda and her fiancé in a Calgary restaurant … and the fiancé is Martin’s former colleague, Bob, “who’d driven Amanda home from play dates with his own daughter, Brandi”. We really get the sense of Martin’s despair: a testament to Slind’s skill.

The author also slings several comical similes and metaphors, ie: Ruth “smelled like scented maxi-pads,” and grieving parents Alex and Trudy, Canadians travelling in Europe: “packed their grief, carry-on and oversized, and it bumps along behind them over the old cobblestones.”         

These edgy, slick and diverse short stories feature characters in life-changing moments. Slind’s is a welcome new voice on the map of Saskatchewan literature.  

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

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"Don’t They KICK When You Do That? Stories of a Prairie Veterinarian"\

Written by Dr. Gary Hoium

Published by DriverWorks Ink

Review by Shelley A. Leedahl

$19.95  ISBN 9-781927-570746

 

While conducting author visits in schools over the decades, I’d often ask students what they wanted to be when they grew up, and, invariably, veterinarian was a top response. I understand that. Who doesn’t love animals? Interestingly, Dr. Gary Hoium—veterinarian and author of Don’t They KICK When You Do That? Stories of a Prairie Veterinarian—never intended to become a vet.  It was “never a goal or an ambition of mine while I was growing up in rural Saskatchewan,” he explains in his just-published collection of experiences as a mixed-animal veterinarian and clinic owner in Weyburn. Instead, Dr. Hoium had his hopes set on an NHL career, but when that and medical school admission attempts failed, he applied to the Western College of Veterinary Medicine and was soon on his way to becoming a vet for the next 36 years.   

His conversational stories about animal patients (and their humans) are shared over 41 short chapters, many of them humourous. The cover image of this conversationally-toned book shows a smiling Dr. Hoium at work: left hand holding up a cow’s tail while his right arm’s disappeared “up the south end” of the animal. This in-the-field photo—and that impish grin—set the book’s light tenor.  

A few weeks after graduating from the WCVM, Dr. Hoium was already working for a Weyburn veterinary practice, and one of the first calls was to treat a sick snake: Dr. Houim’s not a fan of snakes. Another early call concerned the delivery of twin calves. An emergency C-section was performed, and Dr. Hoium and a fellow vet discovered that the calves were conjoined at their sternums. He writes: “ … it sure made for an unceremonious welcome to the real world for this neophyte veterinarian.”  

The author’s often self-deprecating: he alludes to some of his miscues as well as his successes, like the time he thought he was spaying a cat and “spent the better part of two minutes fishing with [his] special surgical spay hook in the abdominal cavity” before he learned the cat was male.

This witty vet is highly entertaining, and I imagine he’s been sharing these tales with receptive audiences for years. The disparate anecdotes provide a close inspection of a rural veterinary practice and some smalltown characters, like nefarious Terry, the bouvier des Flandres’ dog-owner who had “sticky fingers,” was frequently drunk, and referred to Dr. Hoium as “bro”.

There are strange situations aplenty. A cat that’s gorged on grasshopper parts; a farmer who kept a calf whose feet had frozen and fell off (“because she seemed so healthy, we decided to keep her”); untangling a clump of tail-tied grey fox squirrels in a Weyburn parking lot; a $25,000 ostrich with a mangled leg; a cat with “a thistle in his pistol”; and the vet’s unforgettable electric fence jolts … and I’m not even going to get into the sheltie collie’s rectal issue.

But back to that cover image. Do they kick? Read the book, and you’ll find out.  

 

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

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“Grandpa’s Garage”

Written by Amber Antymniuk

Published by Blow Creative Arts

Review by Shelley A. Leedahl

$22.00   ISBN 9-781999-546212

I’ve noticed that an increasing number of children’s authors—and particularly new writers—are opting to self-publish. Alternately, they could wait for months to hear back from a trade publisher regarding whether a book will be accepted for publication, then wait for up to several years (I’m speaking from experience: I had a book accepted in 2010 and released in 2020) for that book to hit the shelves. When one possesses artistic talent as well as literary talent, it makes especially good sense to self-publish, and that’s precisely what Saskatchewan creator and Arts Education teacher Amber Antymniuk did with Grandpa’s Garage.  

Antymniuk’s second book for young readers (or listeners) explores the wonderfully diverse items that appear in “Grandpa’s Garage,” and each page features rhyming text in a large font, an appealing watercolour illustration, and enough white space to make the words and images pop. Antymniuk mostly makes it personal, describing things that I expect actually do reside in a relative’s garage, like “farm cats,” “An old radio tuned to the local station” and “a stack of manuals and a bent fishing fly,” but near the end she writes “Whether Grandpa’s Garage is a shop or a shed. Or a room beneath the stairs nearly bumping your head.” This transition away from the personal makes the story inclusive: anyone who has a grandfather (or grandfather-figure) in their life with a specific place where items are stored and repaired can imagine the interior of their own special person’s shop, shed or garage, and experience the warmth and love within that relationship.   

 In describing the precise items in “Grandpa’s Garage,” readers are able to glean not only a fine sense of the place, but also something of Grandpa’s character and hobbies. We learn that his “big red toolbox sits organized and neat,” so we can guess that he, too, is organized. The slightly tatty-looking stools beside the toolbox are there to welcome guests: Grandpa likes company. Bent nails and “some rusty old pails” demonstrate a frugal handyman. The colourful image of a fishing fly shows us that Grandpa’s an angler, and an old, handmade slingshot—one of the “small treasures that grandpa holds dear”—indicates that he’s nostalgic about his youth. The all-important cover image—a muddy pair of small, red rubber boots sitting next to a pair of equally muddy men’s work boots—suggests a warm, generational bond.

I appreciate how Antymniuk used the often gentle and tender medium of watercolour to portray items some might not consider paint-worthy, ie: the business end of a hammer, the rusty pail, a “hanging trouble light” and a power drill. Lovely contrast.

Antymniuk grew up near Tisdale, SK, and now lives and parents in Saskatoon. Her publishing moniker, Blow Creative Arts, is an homage to her grandparents and their children, all of whom “have had a lasting impact on the community.” As the author publishes under her married name, she’s chosen to honour her first family in this unique and lovely way. See www.blowcreativearts.ca .    

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

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"Stories from the Churchill”

Written by Ric Driediger, with Illustrations by Paul Mason

Published by Your Nickel’s Worth Publishing

Review by Shelley A. Leedahl

$24.95  ISBN 9-781988-783727

 

Ric Driediger’s positively reverent when he writes about the beauty and challenges inherent in canoeing Saskatchewan’s vast northern waterways. The owner/operator of Churchill River Canoe Outfitters in Missinipe, SK may already be known to readers—and fellow canoeists—through his first book, Paddling Northern Saskatchewan: A Guide to 80 Canoe Routes. Now this knowledgeable paddler has penned Stories from the Churchill, and he describes it as “the book [he] wanted to write” whereas the earlier book was the one he “needed” to write. There’s a difference. What comes through the page is that Driediger’s doing exactly what he was meant to, both professionally and personally, and he knows just how fortunate he is.  

Even if you never intend to canoe across a morning-calm lake, brave big-lake wind and river rapids, portage through “swampy muskeg,” lose yourself in the boreal wilderness, “go solo” (“a spiritual experience”), or winter camp, this book will inform and entertain you. It’s well-written in a conversational tone, and includes anecdotes from Driediger’s own adventures and stories from his clients’ and staff’s experiences, too.

Driediger’s a natural storyteller, and in this softcover with 20 stand-alone chapters—and occasional cartoon illustrations by another canoeing aficionado, the author’s longtime friend, Paul Mason—readers are privy to a canoe-seat view through what the author describes as the best canoe routes in the world, but this is more than a book about canoeing: Dreidiger also shares his “philosophy of life” and his “understanding of the importance of experiencing wilderness.”

His introduction to canoeing began in 1972, just after high school graduation. He and his cousin joined a group of young adults who got a “crash course in canoeing and canoe tripping” from farmer/canoe instructor LaVerne Jantz, and in one day they went “from never having paddled to running rapids.” During that initial trip on the Churchill, Driediger “absolutely fell in love with the rock shoreline, with the complexity of the lakes, with the moss in the forest, with the knowledge that just over the hill another lake waited.”

One intriguing chapter concerns the writer’s preparations for and experiences with winter camping on the Churchill River. He awoke one morning—it was -54 degrees Celsius—unable to put his pants on: they were “flat, frozen solid.” He and his companions used their axe “to chop pieces of peanut butter, jam, honey, and chocolate,” and they “ate as [they] walked” because it was too cold to stop.

In another chapter, Driediger’s created a fictional story to explain the discovery of a sewing machine in the depths of a lake. He demonstrates how canoeing teaches humility and canoe groups form lifelong bonds. There also harrowing anecdotes about being stuck in a rapidly-filling culvert; 140 km hour winds and 1.5 metre waves; fatal lightning strikes; and drownings. Still: “Driving on the highway is far more dangerous.”

Canoeing romances, cross-continent adventurers, respect for First Nations’ neighbours and the land, and the history of Churchill River Canoe Outfitters … Driediger’s book is a compendium of captivating stories.

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

 

 

Three Reviews: Pitchblende, by Elise Marcella Godfrey; Bread & Water, by dee Hobsbawn-Smith; and Girl running, by Diana Hope Tegenkamp

“Pitchblende”

By Elise Marcella Godfrey

Published by University of Regina Press

Review by Shelley A. Leedahl

$19.95  ISBN 9-780889-778405

 

I didn’t know what pitchblende was before I read Elise Marcella Godfrey’s same-named poetry collection, but I certainly do now. To shortcut, merriam-webster.com describes pitchblende as “a brown to black mineral that consists of massive uraninite, has a distinctive luster, contains radium, and is the chief ore-mineral source of uranium”. It’s a measure of the poet how Godfrey takes this radioactive by-product of uranium ore—and the capitalist/colonialist/mostly male culture surrounding its extraction and usage—and transforms it into a finely-tuned collection of political, environmental, and investigative poetry.

Godfrey writes from “the traditional and unceded land of the QayQayt First Nation” on Vancouver Island, and this well-researched, multi-voiced collection exhibits a deep caring for the earth and its peoples. Her cry is clear: “the neocolonical machine … promotes profit and industry at the expense of community and sustainability.”

Pitchblende does not read like a first book. Godfrey’s a graduate of the Master of Fine Arts in Writing at the University of Saskatchewan and her work’s appeared in journals and anthologies: she’s put in the literary leg work, and it shows. These poems are saturated with internal and off-rhymes rhymes—ie: “Mine and refinery,” “Throwing off gamma rays, errant vibrations/that penetrate in waves,” and “Ancient dust from dying stars. Excision sites, scars”—and the precise language of mining and the boreal world, ie: “Blueberry, cloudberry, bearberry, mossberry./Juniper. Currant. Indigo/milk caps, morels, chanterelles. Wild rice. Lichens.” I appreciate the mouth-watering language of science, too: “Fungus forms/mycological rhizomes,/foliose, fruticose, squamulose/lobes and crustose structures.” Ironic how what sounds so pretty—"milky green water, as if golden moonglow lichen/crushed and glittered into it”—illustrates such ecological devastation.

The poems appear in various forms but most notable are the erasure poems. Godfrey wrote the collection “after reading testimonies given at public hearings held throughout Saskatchewan in 1993 on the territories of Treaties 4, 6, 8 and 10.” These hearings’ transcripts—from mining industry representatives; biologists; a male-exclusive, federally-appointed panel; Indigenous Elders; and “a united group of women (who were white settlers)” are archived, and Godfrey “adapted sections of testimony, while also writing poems triggered by their content and related research.” The erasure poems spotlight distinct words which graphically explode across the page, often with just one or two words on a line, and much space around them. There’s abundant alliteration throughout, and even onomatopoeia (“Read the radiograph,/its staccato syntax scrambled”).

 Several poems are written in a speaker’s voice, ie: “Elder’s Testimony” at Hatchet Lake: “Caribou still come south/but the government tells us we can’t eat the kidneys/heavy with metals: cadmium, polonium, cesium, lead./The government says it’s okay to eat the liver.” A Black Lake Elder’s concerns—“We’re worried uranium will ruin our water”—are contrasted against Uraneco’s response—“If anything, the region will be cleaner after we leave.” Call-and-response; it’s highly effective.

This daring poet puts a finger on the pulse of a hurting earth, where humans “crack the ancient world’s ribs/for one last gasp” and “Our sun is set to swallow us.” Powerful, and true.  

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

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“Bread and Water”

By dee Hobsbawn-Smith

Published by University of Regina Press

Review by Shelley A. Leedahl

$26.95  ISBN 9-780889-778115

   

I know dee Hobsbawn-Smith as a multi-genre writer, chef, yogi, runner, mother, and yes, as a friend. She and husband Dave Margoshes hosted me for a reading at their ancestral rural home (“The Dogpatch”) near Saskatoon years ago, and when dee was touring a poetry collection on Vancouver Island, I welcomed her at my place. “I’ll cook for you,” she said, “using whatever you have in the house.” I’m was embarrassed by my uninspired inventory, yet she whipped a brilliant meal together with my mundane larder. One doesn’t forget that.

So yes, I know this dexterous writer, and expected a great read in her essay collection, Bread & Water. The text behind the gorgeously apropos cover photograph—a chunk of homemade bread and a glass of water—is wide-ranging, provocative, and, like that heel of bread, hearty. What I didn’t expect was how much I’d admire these lyrical essays which took me back to the Dogpatch, but also to Vancouver, Comox, and the waters off Vancouver Island; to dee’s Calgary home, restaurants, and the 2013 flood in that city; to Fernie; and to France, where the author trained to be a chef. (Her upbringing in an RCAF family—“part of a gypsy air force brood”—prepared her for frequent moves in adulthood.)

And yes, these essays concern food, food culture, the restaurant industry, locavorism, gardens, farmers’ markets, preserving, and even the import of using appropriate knives, but I’d argue they give equal space to Hobsbawn-Smith’s observance of and appreciation for the wondrous natural world.  

The Dogpatch and surrounding property deserve mention, as where we write  influences the what and how. When Hobsbawn-Smith arrived from Alberta, leaving her career as a chef and food writer behind in favour of literary endeavours, she found “Every building and field [was] crammed with broken and corroding evidence of three generations.” She wondered: “How does a writer find what lies within when the roof leaks?” Yet when she looked out her window, she saw “The red sun rising. Three deer scudding across the south pasture through the hay bales” and “Chickadees, snug in their little black bonnets. Words that sort themselves into a resonant voice.” The land flooded and a spontaneous lake appeared. She writes: “A large part of my enjoyment is the auditory experience of life beside a lake: the thrumming of frogs; the lilting melody of chickadees and meadowlarks; the hummingbirds’ whirring wings” and “the geese honking as they arrive and leave like metronomes each spring and fall; coyotes carolling each evening.”

Here’s wisdom: “Food and cooking are complicated snapshots of our culture.” The author demonstrates this. And praises spring vegetables: “Asparagus was hope made tangible, spears spun from fragile ferns and sunshine after winter’s absolutist mineral-fed root vegetables.” She “carried home a bunch of living watercress like a bouquet.”

“In cooking, we express our deepest feelings about the nature of the universe, our deepest faith and connection to all that is primal and irresistible.” I’ll tell you what’s irresistible—this delicious book.    

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

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“Girl running”

By Diana Hope Tegenkamp

Published by Thistledown Press

Review by Shelley A. Leedahl

$24.95  ISBN 978-1-77187-214-0

 

When a veteran multi-disciplinary artist pens a poetry collection, it’s likely that the influence of her other art practices will seep into the pages and make for an original read. This is evidenced in the case of Diana Hope Tegenkamp, a Saskatoon-based poet who also works with film, photography, visual and performance art, sound and music. In her debut poetry book, Girl running, Tegenkamp’s 23-page poem incorporates various fonts, strike-outs, quotations, footnotes, and superimposed text across a “mountain-like shape” which is “an outline of the iceberg that sunk the Titanic,” and the entire long poem is a conversational response to an 1809 textbook (Letters on Ancient History, by Anne Wilson). So interesting, and so are the questions it poses about history and subjectivity. “History, a whirlpool,³²/sucking in obscure circumstances/with a frightful noise.³³”  

Tegenkamp also eludes to sculpture, novels, paintings and films, ie: director Jane Campion’s adaptation of “Portrait of a Lady,” and there’s a poetic close-up of a poignant scene from “Boys Don’t Cry,” the 1999 Academy Award-winning movie concerning the tragic, real-life story about murdered trans man Brandon Teena in Nebraska.

The poems in this book appear in various shapes and forms, from couplets and tercets to the three, page-long “Loop” poems, which are dreamy, yummy, stream-of-consciousness prose poems inspired by Canadian poet Nicole Brossard’s work. Lines from Tegenkamp’s first “Loop” demonstrate her keen ear and eye, with special attention paid to the wind, colour, ordinary domestic scenes, the natural world, and philosophic leaps: “The rise and fall of piano notes, computer’s hum, and backroads where the wind blows clean through. Pattern of pink blossoms on my living room chair and the animal nature of letters, forming, begetting, coupling tactile experience and supple thinking.”

 As a prairie poet, light, wind and winter feature greatly. As a visual artist, these poems are deliberately seeped in colour, from a father’s “green Pontiac” to “white zinnias” and “cormorants/blue ghosts on the telephone wire.” I love the space this artist allows around several lines in her poems. This affords readers time to contemplate lyrical lines like this: “What about so much light/the mind goes white?”

 These poems often examine seeing and being seen. The tender first poem ends with “the ongoingness of I see you”. From “Clouds”: “Touch the tree trunks and tell the clouds:/I see you.” The writer observes “dark pines rise from the mollusk dawn” (“The Return”), and she includes a sublime description of winter and a beloved mother’s failing vision: through “her left eye,/morning seen through/snow granules.” (“Little Winters”). These are also poems about metaphorical vision, ie: “the feast of geranium petals, red swoon/across the lawn”.

Tegenkamp’s debut book is luminous, partly because she juxtaposes the everyday—Mom pours coffee, puts cream and sugar/on the counter. Wipes the wink with a towel”—with insightful assertions—“Time, she says, does not flow in even measures,” but mostly because Tegenkamp’s just a damn fine writer. Several of the poems salute her mother (d. 2018), but these chiseled poems should resonate with anyone.   

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

 

 

 

  

Three Reviews: The 1-Dogpower Garden Team by Alison Lohans, illustrated by Gretchen Ehrsam; Adventures on the Circle Star Ranch by Jackie Cameron, illustrated by Wendi Nordell; and Baby Rollercoaster: The Unspoken Secret Sorrow of Infertility by Janice Colven

 

“The 1-Dogpower Garden Team”

Written by Alison Lohans, Illustrated by Gretchen Ehrsam

Published by Your Nickel’s Worth Publishing

Review by Shelley A. Leedahl

$14.95  ISBN 9-781988-783710

 

The 1-Dogpower Garden Team—the latest book by multi-genre author Alison Lohans—is a collaborative effort, and well worth the read. I’ve not read every book in this talented Regina writer’s veritable library of titles—28 books, which include YA and adult novels and illustrated children’s books—but the several I have read demonstrate that this is a veteran writer who pays close attention to craft and delivers meaningful, heart-filled literature each time she puts her pen to page. Now Lohans has teamed with illustrator Gretchen Ehrsam on a unique illustrated children’s story about a girl (Sophie) and her hole-digging dog (Max), and how a common canine problem transitions into a child’s brilliant solution.

What strikes me first and foremost is how different this story is—Lohans’ innovative use of language and humour and Ehrsam’s detailed, black and white prints (surrounded by a moss green border) coalesce so effectively, after I’d read the book the first time I immediately wanted to read—and admire—it again.

Upon my second reading, I deduced that part of the magic is Lohans’ use of both simple sentences, which one might expect in a children’s book—the book begins with “Sophie loved her dog, Max.”—and surprises within the text, ie: “ … the weeds grew fast, and her family didn’t have a rototiller.” A rototiller? Mentioned on the first page of a children’s story? I say Bravo!

And it’s not just the diction here that deserves mention; the realistic characterizations, including that of credible secondary characters, ie: “Sophie’s dad loved motors and boats, and watching sports on TV” also merit praise. Dad finds an ad for a “90-horsepower motorboat”— a “good deal”—in the newspaper, and Sophie’s garden-loving mom responds that they need a “90-horsepower rototiller.” The family’s laughter sets the tone: this is a happy home.

The tone’s replicated via the accomplished illustrations. The books on the coffee table before Dad are titled Calculus for Fun and Philately Today. The neighbour, Mrs. Magruther—awoken by Sophie and Max in the garden late at night—is shown with a babushka-type-deal on her head. “What’s going on over there?” she asks. I also noted a heart on several pages: on Sophie’s clothing, in heart-shaped leaves, on her teddy bear, and hanging on the kitchen wall. And the portrayal of Max going through his repertoire of tricks “without even being told” warmed my dog-loving heart.

 On the facing third and fourth pages we find Max in Mom’s garden, inadvertently digging up beans where he sniffs out a buried bone, and thus begins the conflict that drives the plot: a good dog has a bad habit, and Sophie must solve the problem.

 This delightful book celebrates teamwork, ingenuity, and the bond between a girl and her dog. (Good boy, Max!) I expect that Lohans and Ehrsam—who are cousins—had an especially good time working on this story together: that inherently comes across. If you wish to read more of the award-winning author’s work, see alisonlohans.wordpress.com.

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

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“Adventures on the Circle Star Ranch”

Written by Jackie Cameron, Illustrated by Wendi Nordell

Published by Your Nickel’s Worth Publishing

Review by Shelley A. Leedahl

$14.95  ISBN 9-781988-783703

 

As a resident of Vancouver Island, it was a strange synchronicity that I happened to be on the TransCanada near Swift Current as I finished reading the final chapters of Adventures on the Circle Star Ranch. This lively illustrated novel for young readers is set in that very area, and writer Jackie Cameron—whose  family “had horses and raised beef cattle”—also lives nearby.  While I shared the adventures of Ben (nine), Sarah (eleven) and their “fearless dog, Scruffy” aloud, my partner steered us between golden pastures, where the deer and antelope were indeed playing, and “dusty country road[s]”and “sagebrush” were plentiful. So cool.   

This 60-page ranch-family story is divided into short chapters, and the age-appropriate language— Cameron’s a retired librarian/school division resource professional-turned-author­—ensures that juvenile readers won’t struggle as the realistic plot (including a cattle rustling mystery) unfolds. The siblings argue as siblings do, ie: Sarah says, “Mom, make him stop!” after Ben threatens to tell the story about Sarah learning to play the bagpipes:  when she played the cows came running toward the house because, as Dad deduced, “when the cows heard Sarah playing the bagpipes, they thought it was the sound of a calf in trouble.”

 The entertaining book is full of details and anecdotes that this reader guesses are lifted from “real life”. The kids do chores, like ensuring the calves “don’t get too far behind” when the herd’s being moved to the summer pasture; a friend’s dad got caught “between a barbwire fence and some cows rushing toward the creek” and earned twenty stitches; and Mom hands Sarah “an old cellphone” before the brother and sister are about to ride off on their horses (with two Girl Guide cookies each), and tells her daughter “I just put ten dollars of time on this phone, so take it with you in case you have to phone me.” Adults “talk about boring things like the need for more rain, how cool most of the summer has been so far, and the high prices of gas.”

There are several food descriptions, ie: picnic lunches, and the cattle drive lunch, which includes “Grandpa Joe’s gluten-free sandwiches” and “Carrots and red pepper sticks, apples and grapes, cookies and granola bars”. It’s easy to imagine the “huge thermoses of coffee and tea set on the tailgate” as Scruffy—the abandoned dog found while the brother and sister are out on their horses with “Dad” (who is “[riding] … around the pastures to see if any fences need fixing”)— darts between the characters and calves.   

Wendi Nordell’s detailed black and white drawings—one or two per chapter—enhance Cameron’s text and tell stories of their own ie: cowboy-hatted adults sit around a campfire while the children split into small groups, and a horse checks out the action from beyond the barn. Kids could have fun colouring the illustrations with pencil crayons.   

And what about those cattle rustlers? Ah, you’ll just have to read this endearing “wild west” book to learn more.

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

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“Baby Rollercoaster: The Unspoken Secret Sorrow of Infertility”

By Janice Colven

Published by Wood Dragon Books

Review by Shelley A. Leedahl

$19.99   ISBN 9-781989-078587

 

I’ve just had the pleasure of reading the well-written, beautifully designed, highly personal and informative book by teacher/ranch wife/writer Janice Colven about her lifelong yearning to be a mother and her seven-year journey on the rollercoaster that is infertility. Throughout the candid, 207-page story, Colven uses the extended metaphor of a rollercoaster to parallel the ups and downs she and her husband experienced during this painful time, and the book’s title—Baby Rollercoaster: The Unspoken Secret Sorrow of Infertility—reflects their hopeful highs and heart-breaking lows.

Colven writes that she’s always dreamed of becoming a mother. As a child she “loved baby dolls and everything that went with them,” and her “loving and nurturing spirit” even extended to the prairie girl wrapping a dead gopher “in a soft, pink blanket” and strolling it as one would a baby. Later she practised her maternal skills on younger siblings. “We buy the map to motherhood and have the trip planned down to the smallest detail,” she writes.

In her introduction Colven shares that she wrote this “for the women who are walking the same infertility path,” and “to provide insight” for those women who “love and support us through infertility”. Infertility’s a prevalent problem: “one in six women” struggle with it.

The story includes anecdotes about Colven’s first teaching job—“in a one-tumbleweed town”—and it details how she met her husband; her initial suspicions about infertility (“After one year of spinach eating, laying with my legs in the air, ovulation tracking, and college-level trying”); and her preposterous interactions with a local doctor (“Dr. Mustache”). (Colven gives her medical professionals funny, fictitious names, including Dr. Straight Shooter and Dr. Lucky Strike.) We learn about her diagnosis of endometriosis and a seven-hour surgery to remove uterine tumours, and later her unfruitful and expensive dance with in vitro fertilization (IVF), but the medically-themed chapters are interspersed with chapters about growing up on a farm, where the author and her brother had to rogue (walk “arm length to arm length through a field of flowering mustard plants” to uncover “defective or inferior plants”); teaching; and the writer’s relationship with her much more adventurous younger sister, Rhonda, who becomes her egg donor.

The book is seamlessly organized, and includes many sentences that are zingers, ie: “My marriage was in trouble” and “Fertility is a business, and it preys on childless women when we are most vulnerable” .

When grasping at hope, signs like a single apple on a previously “barren” tree carried huge meaning for the writer. She writes about her tremendous guilt at not being able to conceive, and frequently offers support to others. A section on what not to say to a woman or couple without children is most helpful, and readers will appreciate the nod toward other empowering books.

American psychologist Carl Roger’s said “the most personal is the most universal,” and that’s why we need books like Baby Rollercoaster. They connect us with humanity. They let us know we’re not alone.     

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

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