In a colliery town, sirens from the mine can mean cave-ins, explosions, or, as in the Westray disaster, sudden death.
Sheldon Currie, author of The Glace Bay Miners’ Museum was born in Reserve Mines, Cape Breton, and judging by the headlong intensity of this novel, he still hears those sirens.
The story begins as shy, awkward Margaret MacNeil meets a strapping miner named Neil Currie. She’s already had her father and a brother die in the coalpits, but she hopes that Neil will be more lucky.
Literary
Surviving the Halifax Explosion is one thing, but how do Lucy Caines and her wayward husband, Harry, a couple who lose everything to the event’s horrors, make peace with their grief? Rebuilding on the rustic shores of Halifax’s Northwest Arm, steps from where the shaft of the <I>Mont Blanc</I>’s anchor lands that fateful day in 1917. But coping with the disappearance on that day of their infant daughter, they descend into an isolating denial: Lucy through guilt and reticence, and Harry through drinking and gambling. Despite the birth of a treasured son, each faces a future clouded by fear and apprehension. Then, fifty-two years after the catastrophe, Harry suffers a stroke. Lucy confronts the miracle of their survival and their debilitating loss, re-examining the past and her role in its making, and struggling to become the author of her own happiness.
<p>In this punchy, uproarious romp of a novel, the Halifax boxing world — peopled with has-beens, wannabes, and posers dressed in spandex, leopard prints, and tie dye — touches gloves […]
It’s 1960 and Elizabeth is slowly coming apart. Her reality is splintering and she wants to harm her children. Fifteen years later, Elizabeth is desperately trying to fill in the gaps electric shock therapy has left in her memory. She longs to find her children and explain that she never meant to leave for so long. A moving exploration of illness, memory, and how we fight for who we love.
<EM>Gregor Samsa Was Never in The Beatles</EM>, J. J. Steinfeld’s twentieth book and thirteenth short story collection, is an eclectic and thought-provoking mix of 45 speculative fictions written between 1983 […]
<p>1971. Lilac Welsh lives an isolated life with her parents at Rough Rock on the Winnipeg River. Her father, Kal, stern and controlling, has built his wealth by designing powerful […]
<p>In a St. John’s hospital in 1945, Elsa Evans keeps a furtive vigil over the deathbed of Abram Kean, the renowned sealing captain. Remembering her first husband and her two brothers killed in the trenches thirty years before, and another young friend, Noah, frozen on the ice during the sealing disaster of 1914, Elsa contemplates a hideous revenge. The shock of her own bitterness forces her to retrace part of her life which is interwoven with those of her former employers, Simon and Sarah Jenson. </p>
<p>On the morning of July 1916, officer Lt. Simon Jenson, severely shell-shocked and demoralized after a year and a half in the trenches, fails in leadership, hanging behind his men as they march through into no-man’s-land. When a figure emerges from the drifting smoke, he thrusts the blade of his bayonet forward not into the enemy but into the body of Charles Baxter, a comrade and the brother of his fiancée, Sarah. Surviving against the odds, and with his battlefield actions misinterpreted, Simon is feted as a hero. But when Simon returns from the war, Sarah finds him emotionally fragile and prone to violent rages- not even their young daughter Lucy can cheer him. Worse, their lives are soon overtaken by the shadow of blackmail, and Sarah and Elsa, Lucy’s governess, are forced to reconsider everything they once believed about loyalty, valour, and responsibility.</p>
<b>Atwood Gibson Writers’ Trust Fiction Prize, Finalist • One of Indigo’s Most Anticipated Canadian Books • One of the CBC’s Canadian Fiction Books to Read in Fall 2024<br><ol> </ol><i>Women Talking</i> […]
<p><b>Finalist, Ottawa Book Award for Fiction 2019<br>Long-Shortlisted, 2019 Relit Award (Short Story Category)</b></p><p>Drugs. Violence. Racism. Despair. The tiny, northern town of Fort Fierce has issues in spades, and most of […]
<p><b>Co-Winner, Margaret Laurence Award for Fiction</b></p><p>Patricia Robertson’s new collection of short fiction, <i>Hour of the Crab</i>, is a work of insight and mastery, each story demonstrating an original vision, intriguing […]
<p><b>A breathtaking duet of spare, poetic novellas documenting the double-edged sword of self-acceptance. </b></p><p>Heather Nolan returns with <i>How to Be Alone</i>, a pair of novellas that depict the euphoric highs […]
<p><b>Winner, City of Victoria Butler Book Prize<br>Shortlisted, Ethel Wilson Fiction Prize<br>A National Post Best Book of 2015</b></p><p> »<i>The Hunter and the Wild Girl</i> is powerful, almost elemental storytelling, an achievement not […]
