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About Island in the Clouds:

Book Club Buddy: What do you think readers will find most notable about this book?

Susan M. Toy: Most notable is the setting – a Caribbean island – and the lives led there by expats. Many people dream of retiring early, escaping to the tropics, but never live those dreams. This book gives them a taste of living far from home, from the familiar and normal.

BCB: Have you acquired any good anecdotes surrounding this book? If so, could you share one?

Susan M. Toy: I wrote the novel while living fulltime on Bequia, after falling out with someone. I was seething over the experience, so I decided to write out my frustrations. I sat next to our neighbour’s pool, pen and pad of paper in hand, and visualised a dead body floating in the water.

BCB: Did researching and writing this book teach you anything or influence your thinking in any way?

Susan M. Toy: Writing taught me to observe, listen, and more fully understand (or at least try to make sense of) where I was living. Living in a completely different culture  makes you think hard about yourself, your beliefs, and the standards you hold to be true about life and living. Writing this book had me look more closely at people I knew, both expats and locals, and the relationships I had with them. Plus I soaked up a wealth of stories, dialect, and a way of thinking I would never have accessed otherwise.

BCB: What would you most like readers to tell others about this book?

Susan M. Toy: I hope readers will enjoy the story and encourage their friends to read it. If they find this book intriguing, engaging and funny, and want to visit Bequia again in future novels (in the Bequia Perspectives series), then I’ll feel as though I’ve accomplished something significant.

BCB: Can you suggest one question readers might find interesting to discuss, concerning you, your writing in general, or this book?

Susan M. Toy: Readers might find it interesting to discuss life outside their comfort zone, and what it means to live within another culture, or even to just live a life different from what they’re accustomed to. How might they react in a different locale and culture?

BCB: How can readers help you promote this book?

Susan M. Toy: If readers like this book, they should tell their friends. I also welcome questions and comments about the book, about my life on the island, and am happy to discuss Bequia as a possible travel destination – although I stop short of acting as a travel agent!

About You:

BCB: Why do you write?

Susan M. Toy: I’ve always been a reader and spent my entire working career selling and promoting books and authors. Most of my friends are writers. I did dabble in writing as an angst-ridden teen, but set that aside to sell books for everyone else. I began writing again when I realized I had many of my own stories to tell that others were interested in reading.

BCB: What is your greatest strength as a writer?

Susan M. Toy: I’m told it’s my tenacity. I call myself an overnight success – ten years in the making. In spite of all my connections in the publishing business, it was still an uphill battle to learn how to write and tell a story well then find someone who wanted to publish my writing. I learned to enjoy the process rather than sweat the rejections and, as a result, I’ve managed to hang onto my dream (of seeing my work published) longer  than most writers would.

BCB: What quality do you most value in yourself?

Susan M. Toy: My sense of humour. If we can laugh at ourselves and find humour in our lives and surroundings then I think we can avoid adversity altogether. The entire world could stand a lot more humour.

BCB: In addition to writing, what else are you passionate about?

Susan M. Toy: I love to cook. I enjoy eating and take any opportunity to cook for others who also appreciate good food. I’ve always thought that baking bread is a lot like writing a novel, though, so the two passions are kind of related.

BCB: What are you most proud of accomplishing so far in your life?

Susan M. Toy: I was named Sales Representative of the Year for Canada in 1994; I began a company, Alberta Books Canada, to promote books and their authors in new ways; I’ve recently set up a publishing company, IslandCatEditions, and have big plans to publish great books in the near future! I guess that’s three things, but they’re all part of what I’ve been doing for two-thirds of my life.

BCB: Is there any new or established author whom you feel deserves more attention, and what is it that strikes you about his or her work?

Susan M. Toy: Betty Jane Hegerat suggested that, if I helped promote her books, she would pay me, because that would allow her more time to write. So I set up Alberta Books Canada. But I love Betty Jane’s writing as well as her loyalty and friendship. She’s a great writer who continues to publish books filled with compelling characters and circumstances. While interest in Hegerat’s writing is building, she’s still not as well known in her home province of Alberta let alone in the rest of Canada or even further afield. She’s also an excellent mentor and writing instructor (I know, because she’s edited a few of my short stories) as well as keen reader and champion of other writers. Betty Jane definitely deserves more attention and I am determined to see her become more widely known. Be sure to check out her listing here on Book Club Buddy!

Visit Susan’s WEBSITE

Island in the Clouds is the first book of four to be published in the Bequia Perspectives series.

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Ever dream of running away to a tropical paradise? The thought had never crossed Geoff’s mind until he fled to Bequia to avoid criminal charges in Canada. But the anonymous, peaceful life he has carved out for himself as an island property manager is thrown into jeopardy when he discovers a dead body floating in a pool.

With Geoff and his girlfriend under threat, and the incompetent local police unable to help, he realizes it’s up to him to find the perpetrator and put a stop to crimes that are quickly destroying this little piece of paradise.

Island in the Clouds is travelogue woven through a murder mystery involving expats who must learn to live within a unique Caribbean culture.

Praise for Islands in the Clouds

~ So here we have a dead body in a swimming pool, a fantastic locale, and a cracking good yarn. Ever dreamed of running away to a Caribbean island? Author Susan Toy entertains while providing the inside scoop on what that might be like. And not to worry. You’ll exit this mystery with your dreams intact.  ~ Ken McGoogan, author, How the Scots Invented Canada, Fatal Passage

~ Island in the Clouds is a wondrous mystery, set on the lush island of Bequia in the Caribbean. A Canadian with a secret past becomes both suspect and investigator for two murders on the island. Along the way, he shares sharp insights into the history and life of this gleaming gem of a place. Susan M. Toy is a keen stylist who never fails to drive her story forward with a sure hand. As in all well-crafted mysteries, the solution to the crimes is both thoroughly surprising and perfectly logical. Toy shows us the sights and lets us hear the rhythms of the islanders and, cunningly, allows us to peek into the lives of a sexy set of expats. ~ Michael Fay founded the Alexandra Writers’ Centre Society

An Excerpt

Chapter One

Racing down the stone path towards the pool, I cursed that last rum and Coke of the previous night. It was just 7:00 a.m., Monday, my busiest day of the week, but I should have been there forty-five minutes earlier. That drink, that last one, was responsible for making me sleep late and would punish me further as I fell behind schedule for the rest of the day.

Unlocking the garden shed door, I hauled out the cleaning equipment and dragged it across the patio. I stopped by the edge of the pool and stood, wavering, looking down, trying to focus my eyes in the sharp sunlight. I’d forgotten to pick up my shades in the rush to leave home. I blinked hard; the rippling reflection in the water made me cringe. I did look as bad as I felt; I needed a shave and hadn’t even had time to comb what hair I still had.  But then, out of the corner of one eye, something drew my attention away from that ugly visage. I turned my head, blinking against the morning sun’s brilliant glint off the water, and focused on an object that looked even worse than I did—a body floating face down at the far end of the pool. A woman’s body; a naked woman’s body.

“Oh, shit!” I slapped my forehead with the palm of my hand. My immediate, selfish reaction was that this was going to further screw up my day. Not to mention throw off the pool’s pH balance.

Then my hangover fog began to lift as the gravity of the situation sank in. I rubbed both fists into my eyes and peered again. Was it just a rum-induced pink elephant? No, the body was still there and I could feel the panic rising. I watched for a moment, trying to calm myself, to clear my thinking, gulping air like a fish out of water in an attempt to keep a sudden bilious eruption in the pit of my stomach from moving up any higher. A slight breeze caused a noticeable ripple on the water’s surface, just enough to make the body drift in a repetitive bump against the pool’s rim. Otherwise, there was no movement at all—no bubbles, anyway, and no point jumping in to save her. She was already dead.

After two years managing foreigners’ properties on the island of Bequia, I’d fished my share of bodies out of pools—all rodent and insect, though, never human.

Now, I like naked women as much as the next guy, but a dead naked woman is another matter. Floating face down, her backside was all I could see. So, even if I had known her, I wasn’t able to say who she was, having had little opportunity to examine too many women’s backsides on this island.

My effort at keeping that bile at bay was becoming futile. I needed to move, but didn’t want to pull her out just to satisfy morbid curiosity. She was in good physical shape, though—apart from the fact that she was floating face down. There were no tan lines and her skin was still fish-belly white. In all likelihood she’d just arrived, one of any number of foreigners, almost all tourists, attracted to this tropical paradise for its sun, fun, and rum.

Read an INTERVIEW with Susan M. Toy

Visit Susan’s WEBSITE

Drawing Back to Take a Running Jump Selected Poems
by Lorne Daniel

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Weedmark Publishing (2011)

The return of one of Canada’s favourite poets.

Drawing Back to Take a Running Jump brings together a selection of the most engaging and compelling poems of Lorne Daniel. These poems are grounded in the landscapes and human interactions of everyday life, while unveiling the internal discoveries of an inquisitive mind.

Poet and non-fiction author Lorne Daniel was born in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada and now lives in Victoria, British Columbia. His writing has been published in dozens of magazines, literary journals and newspapers. Early in his writing career, he was featured in Al Purdy’s Storm Warning 2 anthology of New Canadian Poets. He published three collections of poetry with Red Deer College Press and Thistledown Press, and co-edited the anthology series Ride Off Any Horizon (NeWest Press). Lorne was also co-editor of the seminal prairie poetry journal Canada Goose.

For a number of years, Lorne Daniel turned his writing attention to non-fiction (publishing in national and trade magazines across Canada, and winning the 1996 Jon Whyte Memorial Essay Prize).

In Drawing Back to Take a Running Jump, Lorne returns to poetry with a refreshed selection of the best of his poetry from his earlier books. Included here are poems about the rituals of relationships and passion, poems about the powerful intersection of person and place, and startling poems like “Bone Dance” where anorexia becomes personal.

“Poetry is the caring-place, where the people, places, values and music all come together. Lorne Daniel tends that caring-place, making it a welcome, nourishing abode.” ~ Gary Geddes, author of Drink the Bitter Root

Making Strange

Yesterday, yes I’m sure it was just
yesterday Kate saw Grampa, was
squealing in his bearhug arms, ecstatic
against his chest.
And the day before yesterday, likewise.

Today, head bowed behind fine hair
that hangs straight, oriental
like bamboo curtain
she waits.
Today when Grampa’s large leathery hands reach out
the space between them is an open frontier
(air and hope).

Kate considers the empty distances, solemn. Sure.
Peeking between the strands
…………..through the eloquent silence
you can read those sober eyes. Kate
is seeing something
strange. She is making
new.

Visit Lorne Daniel’s WEBSITE

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About Man & Other Natural Disasters

Book Club Buddy:  What do you think readers will find most notable about Man & Other Natural Disasters?

Nerys Parry: Most readers tell me that what they love is Simon’s unique voice and the lovely way he uses language. He is a poetic if disturbed soul, and this lends his harsh story a strange beauty. The novel itself is also unique, being one part literary fiction and one part historical fiction, with a completely unreliable narrator and a challenging structure. Expect some very surprising twists.

BCB: Have you acquired any good anecdotes surrounding this book? If so, could you share one?

Nerys Parry: The story that seems to fascinate most people is how I came to find Simon’s true story.

Five years ago, the novel had a completely different ending. But after talking with my agent and others, I realized there was something wrong with the closure—it was too like a short story, and didn’t leave me with the feeling a novel usually does. That’s when I realized that Simon was still lying to me, even after I‘d been working with him every day for five years, trying to pull his story out of him. I was pretty well ready to give up on him at this point, and relegate his half-finished novel to the dreaded ‘bottom drawer’.

But then one day, while I was in the National Archives researching chemical warfare for another novel, I stumbled upon a picture of a heavy-set, naked Freedomite woman standing in front of a house she’d just set on fire. The image was startling, but it also triggered a memory of something Simon had once written. On a whim, I hunted for more information and discovered a bundle of old school scribblers in which Fred Davidoff, a former Freedomite, had penciled his autobiography. From Fred’s first line, I recognized the voice—it had the same naive and awed character to it as Simon’s, and the more I read of Fred’s confessions and researched the Freedomite movement, the more parallels with Simon’s story I discovered. It was a pure fluke that I found the photo, but this chance encounter would prove to be the inspiration that would drive me to rewrite the novel’s ending and finally complete Man & Other Natural Disasters. Sometimes, you just get lucky.

BCB: Did researching and writing Man & Other Natural Disasters teach you anything or influence your thinking in any way?

Nerys Parry: As I wrote in my Getting 2 Know U feature, every character I write is my teacher, and Simon certainly taught me a few lessons, the greatest one being not to give up. So many times along the path to publication it seemed as though this book would never see the light of day, and many times I was close to packing it in, but Simon kept coming back. He insisted I return to his story, and wouldn’t leave me alone until I finished it.

Writing is such an act of faith. You open your laptop and heart every day in the small hour or so you’ve stolen from your hectic schedule in the belief that something amazing will happen. Even when it doesn’t, you keep showing up because one day, by chance or perseverance, it will, and in that moment you will be rewarded with a whole new way of seeing a cup of coffee, a fallen petal, a dropped spoon—possibly even the whole world. And that’s what makes it worth it.

BCB: What would you most like readers to tell others about this book?

Nerys Parry: That they loved it, of course! I want readers to enjoy Simon’s unique worldview, the story’s twists and turns, its imagery and layers, and I hope the historical aspect encourages people to think about how we can learn from our past actions.

BCB: Can you suggest one question readers might find interesting to discuss, concerning you, your writing in general, or this book?

Nerys Parry: Because the book deals with real historical events, there are many questions about freedom of religion, terrorism, natural disasters etc… that can be discussed, and so to help book clubs, the press has created a list of reader’s questions available for download HERE. But if I had to narrow it to one question, it would be this: What do you think makes a story ‘true’?

BCB: How can readers help you promote Man & Other Natural Disasters?

Nerys Parry: It would be wonderful if those who enjoy Man & Other Natural Disasters recommend the book to friends, and request copies for local libraries so it can be shared with others. They are also always welcome to post reviews here or on GoodReads or other websites.

About You

BCB: Why do you write?

Nerys Parry: I write because the act of writing is my way of making sense of the world.  Often I’ll arrive at the computer and start off in one direction only to have my character hijack the scene and take me somewhere completely different. If I let that character free, it will often reward me with a line or thought that is completely new to me, one I couldn’t possibly have come up with on my own. Sometimes, on those really good days, these insights change forever how I perceive an event, another person or even myself.

There is a true magic to the fictional process, the opening up to being another person in another place. It’s like deep meditation, or even a kind of channeling—it can open universes.

BCB: What is your greatest strength as a writer?

Nerys Parry: Determination.  I don’t give up easily, which is good because had I given up on Simon five years ago, I might not be here today.

BCB: What quality do you most value in yourself?

Nerys Parry: Compassion.  I love people, even the crazy ones, the petty ones, the hard ones, and the weak ones. Especially the weak ones—what would we write about without them?

BCB: In addition to writing, what else are you passionate about?

Nerys Parry:  Life, particularly in the biological sense. I’m an avid camper and am addicted to nature documentaries and wildlife biologist biographies. It never ceases to amaze me, the wonder of the world and its many adventurers.

BCB: What are you most proud of accomplishing so far in your life?

Nerys Parry:  Being a loving mother.

BCB: Is there any new or established author whom you feel deserves more attention, and what is it that strikes you about his or her work?

Nerys Parry:  There are so many, I’m not sure where to start. Just within Ottawa alone there are many wonderful fiction writers—Joanne Proulx, Barbara Sibbald, Gabriella Golinger, and my fellow Three Women / Three Books cohorts, Jasmine Aziz and Sandra Nicholls. Then there are my classmates from UBC, which include Amy Jones, Sarah Seleky, Tom Hansen, Matthew Trafford, Melanie Schnell, Betty Jane Hegerat, and Daniel Griffin among others.

It’s remarkable how many of us were drinking beers on the patio lamenting our workshop struggles and the long, laborious road to finishing our degrees only a few years ago, and now our books are on the shelves. These are all amazing new writers and I encourage people to try them out—new Canadian fiction is notable for its strong prose, imagination and imagery. As for established writers, I like my many mentors over the years, including Gail Anderson-Dargatz, Zsuzsi Gartner and Elisabeth Harvor, I think just about every one of them could use more press, more coverage, and more readership.

Read more about Nerys Parry’s novel Man & Other Natural Disasters

Simon Peters, a recluse full of half-cocked theories on every subject from heart-broken shrimp to the Jungian consciousness of DNA, meets Minerva, a twenty-two

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year-old business major whose ghostly resemblance to Simon’s dead sister compels him to reveal the horrific natural disasters that killed each of Simon’s family members, one by one.

But parts of Simon’s story do not add up. When he finds Minerva passed out and bleeding on his bathroom floor, he must conquer the tyranny of his own memory and confront what really happened that summer of 1962. But the truth, when uncovered, proves no less astonishing than the original tale.

Based on real historical events, Man & Other Natural Disasters is a testament to the power of story in a world too often shaken by forces outside our control: nature, terrorism, death—even love. Of all the planet has yet to throw at us, the question remains: can we recover from the worst natural disaster yet—ourselves?

Praise for Man & Other Natural Disasters:

“In  Man & Other Natural Disasters, Nerys Parry demonstrates a powerful and emerging talent.  Parry draws the reader into a delightfully quirky and strange story with a narrative that is in turns funny and heartbreaking . . .”  Gail Anderson-Dargatz, A Cure for Death by Lightning

“Man & Other Natural Disasters… is compulsive reading…There were many beautiful lines that I stopped to re-read for the joy of savouring them, rolling them in my mouth like a taste I didn’t want to finish.” – Katherine Lyall Watson, Australian playwright and niece to Lyall Watson

“Nerys Parry’s writing is gorgeous thoughout, passages that beg to be read over and over for the gloriousness of their descriptions… Parry is a richly talented writer, and her first novel is an absorbing, rewarding read.” Kerry Clare, editor of Canadian Bookshelf and top blog picklemethis.com

“…an engaging and thoughtful piece of Canadian literature. …Nerys Parry has written a unique and unpredictable story about a lonely man’s attempt to face up to his own past. She explores universal themes of responsibility and guilt, combined with a solid understanding of human nature… Parry’s prose is enjoyable and elegant and spiced with clever metaphors.” – Winnipeg Free Press

“[Parry] has raised the bar for future writers…” Koozma Tarasoff, Doukhobor expert and activist, author of Spirit Wrestlers: Doukhobor Strategies for Pioneer Living

EXCERPT

We are all looking for answers. From teachers, parents, God and NASA. In mother’s milk, advanced shampoo formulas, Sunday editorials and visitations of the Virgin Mary. And when the answers do come, in flakes and flurries, we hold out our palms to catch them, only to watch them dissolve under scrutiny, melt in the heat of physical contact. In the end, we are always dismayed — shocked, really — that something as fundamental and sacred as truth can change, but still in some form remain. READ MORE…

BOOK CLUB SPECIALS

Great Plains/Enfield & Wizenty books are available at booksellers across Canada, but if your book club orders five or more copies directly from Great Plains Publications you can receive a discount of 25% off the cover price. Simply email your order to us at info@greatplains.mb.ca and mention “Book Club.”

Enhance your reading experience with a free downloadable Book Club Guide for this novel.

Visit Nerys Parry’s WEBSITE, her FACEBOOK page, or follow her on Twitter @nerysparry

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On Toby’s Terms, by Charmaine Hammond, chronicles Toby’s journey from incorrigible to incredible. Toby, is a Chesapeake Bay retriever, adopted at age five, from an animal shelter.

Soon after Toby entered the life and home of Charmaine and her husband Chris, Toby proved to be a holy terror who routinely opened and emptied the hall closet, turned on water taps, pulled and ate things from the bookshelves, sat for hours on end in the sink, and spent his days rampaging through the house, destroying everything in his path.

Oddest of all was his penchant for locking himself in the bathroom, and then pushing the lid of the toilet off the tank, smashing it to pieces. After a particularly disastrous encounter with the knife-block in the kitchen, and when the couple discovered Toby’s bloody paw prints on the phone, they decided Toby needed professional help.

Something magical happened when Charmaine realized that even a dog needs purpose and focus in his life. She redirected his boundless energy into becoming a pet assisted therapy dog. This changed his life and hers, forever.

Praise for On Toby’s Terms

~ Simply a beautiful book about life, love and purpose. ~ Jack Canfield, Co-author of Chicken Soup for the Soul

~ Charmaine Hammond’s love for Toby, her behaviorally challenged Chesapeake Bay retriever, clearly shines through in every page of On Toby’s Terms. Ultimately, Toby becomes the instructor as he teaches Charmaine about living in the moment, finding purpose, and savoring life.  ~ Susan M. Heim, parenting author and Chicken Soup for the Soul editor

~ This book is a MUST READ!  Charmaine and Chris are great examples of what pet parents can go through when they adopt an older pet.  Toby exudes kindness toward humans, young and old, fit or infirm, without any fear or apprehension.  We all go through change in our lives and we must adapt.  Toby shows us that it is okay to be different.  We all need to feel that we are important and it may take us a while to find our true calling as Toby has done. Once you start to read On Toby’s Terms, you will have difficulty putting it down!  You just need to know what Toby will do next! This book is for ALL HUMANS to read.  What an uplifting and inspiring story.   ~ Sandi Strause, Silver Paws Dog Daycare & Training

~ One of the best family books my kids and I have read together in years!  We laughed, we cried, we stayed up way past bedtime reading!  You will LOVE LOVE LOVE this book!   ~ Teresa de Grosbois

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Stopping for Strangers By Daniel Griffin
Vehiculé/Esplanade (2011) 142 pages

Reviewed by Brenda Brooks

On Daniel Griffin’s website you will find the “liner notes” missing from his collection of short stories, Stopping for Strangers. Here he writes of his enduring love for CD’s in their entirety, rather than just the downloaded single track, comparing them to a collection of stories where, hopefully, the whole adds up to more than its individual parts.

This is an apt allusion, because the stories in Stopping for Strangers would be a terrific soundtrack on a car trip where nobody really knows the route, or where they’ll end up, or what events might unfold on the way to … somewhere. And what about that hitchhiker? Is it me, or you?

Our traveling companions through these ten stories are people such as these: Brothers trying to keep brothers from doing irreversible damage; fathers jealous of sons; half-grown men; fateful detours; streaks of bad luck; incandescent moments of good luck; calamity-laced evenings veering off into genuine tragedy; careless cruelty; sharp humor; the tenderness of children; weary, fed-up women and jealous men, and lots of examples of the unique dynamics between an assortment of couples. There are plenty of car trips and almost as many guns, the most ominous and vivid being a Luger laying in fragments on a white cloth (“The Promise”), waiting to be cleaned and reassembled. You would think the soundtrack for stories such as these might be heavy metal, but that’s nowhere near true. Instead, they’re more akin to Emmylou Harris, or Shovels and Rope singing “Forsaken Blues.”

Each of the stories in Stopping for Strangers is told with an ear for texture, dialogue and timing. In the title story, Sheri and her brother head off to bid a final adieu to their dying grandfather. On the way, they pick up a hitchhiker who leaves a self-addressed insulin kit on the back seat. Returning it, they find themselves drawn hesitantly into a house occupied by a mother and her damaged, veteran son, Allen. Sheri’s brother (the story is told through his eyes) is invited up to Allen’s bedroom to examine a suitcase full of souvenir carvings he brought back from Rwanda. There, in a scene as combustible as it is claustrophobic, Allen proceeds to describe the suicide of a fellow-soldier named Mark: Allen lifted a rifle from where it leaned against a wall then sat back down on the floor. “This is what he did. Mark Elliot. He put a pen through the trigger loop down here, opened his mouth, stepped down on the pen, and boom.” Allen set the rifle butt between his feet, held the barrel near the muzzle and opened his mouth. 

In “The Promise,” Doug visits his brother Marshall who is under a restraining order issued on behalf of his ex-wife, Susan. Throughout the story Doug tries to assess his brother’s volatility in hopes that he can set their mother’s mind at ease. But it becomes apparent that hostility and bitterness are now the sum of who Marshall has become. The unfolding events are leavened and soothed by the presence of Doug’s daughter Tracy. Innocent and oblivious to the adult disappointments and heartaches that can deform a grown man, the toddler grows impatient for nothing more than lunch at “Old MacDonalds.” The story ends with an implied (post-story) act of violence, stated with shocking simplicity.

Griffin’s poignant portrayal of young children becomes a steady reminder of how far the adult characters have wandered from their own beginnings. In the story entitled “X,” twenty-four-year-old Ryan sets out with his roommate’s rifle to rid his mother’s cottage of bothersome raccoons. In conversation between son and mother we discover that Ryan’s ex-girlfriend is pregnant with his child (after a brief, drunken fling) and that Ryan’s roommate Alfie has marked the baby’s due date on the calendar with “a big, black X.” Alfie is a reminder of how tempting the world of adolescence remains no matter what our age, much like the seminal Alfie of the 60′s.

“Something I’d been waiting for had happened tonight,” says a character in the title story. The author builds that same sense of expectancy into each of these tales of world-weary but hopeful strangers, and we leave them behind recognizing that they aren’t really strangers at all. Whether behind the wheel, or standing on the road with our thumbs out, we’re all going each other’s way.

Excerpt:

As my sister guided us out of the lot and drove north towards
the highway, I dug my hand into my coat pocket, ran it over the
smooth surface of the wood and gave the figure a little squeeze.
Something I’d been waiting for had happened tonight. It was like
a whip cracked so close to my back I could feel it.
We splashed through puddles on the empty streets. The tarmac
glistened. As we neared the 401, the moon emerged from clouds
and winked at us. Inside and outside, all was silent.

Read more about Stopping for Strangers

Brenda Brooks is the author of Gotta Find Me An Angel, and two collections of poetry.

Other Reviews by Brenda Brooks

Monoceros by Suzette Mayr

The Drifts by Thom Vernon

Tinkers by Paul Harding

The Fund by H.T. Narea

The Girl in the Box by Sheila Dalton

Memoir of a Good Death by Anne Sorbie

Threading Light: Explorations in Loss and Poetry by Lorri Neilsen Glenn
Hagios Press (2011), 144 pages

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Threading Light takes us down prairie roads, to the shores of the East Coast, into Asian market stalls, to the site of the Titanic graves and the kitchen tables of poets, to bring us back whole, refreshed in our understanding about loss, home, and the heart of poetry. In Neilsen Glenn’s lyrical language — language that George Elliott Clarke has called “bordering on the sacred”— we explore loss, grief, and the paths that lead us into writing and community. A blend of memoir, observation, wit, and lament, this book is a trickster, layering the philosophical, the spiritual, the literary, and the personal in ways that both challenge and comfort us, and leave us filled with hope.

Review

With the new year comes a quiet book that makes such a joyful noise it demands proclaiming: Threading Light by Prairie-born and Halifax-based poet and essayist Lorri Neilsen Glenn. A series of interconnected essays, poems and meditations on the subject of loss, Glenn’s work is a gem that’s impossible to put down. The writer’s wisdom is personal and scholarly, and founded on an awe-inspiring range of experiences and literary and spiritually-based sources.

Threading Light is a compelling distillation that moves from the heart-wrenching minutiae of her first loss as a very young woman – the loss of a fiancé – through the losses of both parents and the other accumulated sorrows that life brings. In lesser hands, such material might leave a reader feeling in a rut of sadness. But Glenn is never, ever sentimental, nor is she bookish; rather, she gathers the far corners of heart, mind and soul to explore the inner strength that guides the human spirit through grief. Hers is a dynamic, ever-broadening journey fueled by courage and stamina.

The movement of the pieces themselves mimics the very process of recovery, carrying us just swiftly enough from the particular to the universal with the expansiveness and candour that only arises from a generous spirit. Through her humble, courageous willingness to share her journey, Glenn’s search for some measure of peace in this world of suffering becomes the reader’s. ~ Carolbruneausblog.blogspot.com

Ruth by Marlene S. Lewis

Troubador Publishing Ltd ( 2011 ),  336 page
ISBN-10: 1848766238
ISBN-13: 978-1848766235

Description

It is the late 1950s — the dawn of the civil rights and women’s movements. The naïve idealism of the children of this era is often at odds with the status quo. Ruth, the only daughter of coffee plantation owners, John and Alice Madison, has gone against her father’s wishes and must forsake the lush Owen Stanley Ranges of Papua New Guinea for the streets of working-class Sydney. She finds herself disgraced and alone in a foreign land and learns to live by her wits to avoid sinking into a life of prostitution and poverty — until circumstances take a turn for the worse.

Ruth’s son, Stewart, becomes her driving force. Wanting to make a better life for him, she leaves behind her hand-to-mouth existence in Sydney to work in the vast, rugged plains of Outback New South Wales. Here, she meets and marries the widowed Lachlan McGrath, owner of Bryliambone station.

Life on the land is good until fate turns Ruth’s world upside down, and she faces the loss of everything she has accomplished. Driven to provide for her children, she sets about rebuilding her husband’s debt-ridden business into a thriving cotton farm.

Just as her life is again coming together, news arrives of her father’s suspicious death. Ruth returns to the islands to sort out his affairs, only to face the shocking secrets that had fractured her family years before.

Ruth has elements of Lloyd Jones’ Mr Pip, Ruth Park’s The Harp in the South and Patricia Shaw’s The Feather and the Stone. The novel will appeal to readers interested in family relationships, exotic locations and cultural history.

Author’s Note: Inspiration for Ruth

My writing and drive to write is inspired by everyday people who find themselves faced with extraordinary events and circumstances. It is that something, within an individual, which propels them to deal with-and not be crushed by- life’s difficulties that I find so truly moving and fascinating. Ruth then, could be said to be an amalgam of some of the remarkable women I have met along life’s path. The setting for Ruth was inspired by my discovery, and shock, at the conditions that existed in Papua New Guinea while under the Australian administration. A situation that continued right up to the mid 1970s.

Reader’s Review

At 327 pages Ruth would be too long were it merely a love story with an interesting twist. However, this story of a young woman from her first sexual awakening to a new beginning in middle age is also the story of colonial racism in Australia in the fifties and the consequences of this racism that are passed on from one generation to the next. In addition to this major theme there are sub themes of classicism and sexism that come up in the stories of subsidiary characters Ruth encounters on her journey.

I’ve been known to say that while non-fiction makes us aware of social problems, fiction has more power to make us care about social problems. I should amend that to say that it is the stories of individuals more than statistics that create empathy and a passion to change what is wrong in our societies. So whether a story is fictional or real is not the issue here but whether it is compelling enough to inspire readers to want to do something about the injustices of racism, classicism, sexism as we recognize them around us in addition to helping us recognize them in the first place.

In Ruth, Marlene S. Lewis tells a fictional story that feels absolutely real and as a reader I feel like I could hear the voices of Ruth, Lindsay, Tommy, Joyce, Aggie, Shirley, Ali, Lachlan, Josh and others as if I’d known them. The author has mastered the craft of creating characters with the particular idiosyncracies that make them believable individuals, each and every one. She makes us know them, care about them, hear and respond to what they have to say. There is the usual disclaimer at the beginning that the book is a work of fiction and any resemblance of the characters to real people is purely coincidental. I would add that such resemblance is due to the author’s gifts of observation and insight. The style is matter of fact. Because the facts themselves are dramatic the author has no need to overdramatize events, she simply tells them and we are moved, sometimes shocked, at the simple recitation of the realistically imagined facts.

Because the book depicts so many realistic instances of important universal social issues, Ruth is a book I highly recommend to bookclubs who are looking for spirited discussion of the social dynamics that affect us all, everywhere at some time and all the time somewhere. ~ Sandra Shwayder Sanchez, Bookpleasures.com

Excerpt

The introductions went better than Ruth had anticipated; everyone seemed friendly. They cared a lot about Lachlan she realized; his happiness had somehow bought her acceptance from this group of strangers. Or so it seemed, until everyone’s attention abruptly turned to a raucous melee outside.

“Jessica twisted my arm!” the boy cried, as if his arm had been severed.

“Daddy, he called Stewart a half-caste,” an indignant Jessica protested, as the crowd recoiled in stunned silence.

“I think we should go and find some ice cream,” said Lachlan’s younger cousin, Kathleen, as she hustled the children away.

Ruth wanted to rush over and put her arms around Stewart. To tell him that the boy was just an ignorant yokel who knew no better, but she resisted. As hard as it was, Stewart would need to find his own way in the world, and she wouldn’t always be around to comfort him.

She watched as Jessica ran off with the two boys to get some ice cream. A child wouldn’t just come out and say such a thing, she reasoned; he must have overheard his parents talking. Returning to her husband’s side, Ruth smiled graciously. But she couldn’t let the incident pass.

“Kids!” she said, loud enough not to be missed by the other guests, “they repeat everything they hear at home.” The party resumed, but not before Ruth’s steely gaze caught the boy’s mother’s sheepish eye.

“Good on ya, luv. You got her good and proper, cheeky cow. I bet they been saying all sorts before they got ‘ere,” Joyce said.

“I hope they don’t all turn out to be like them,” Ruth said.

“Some of them seem nice. I was talking to Mabel over near the salads. She said that woman and her husband turn up for anything where there’s a free feed,” Aggie said.

“Lachlan said they only got an invite because they were at the club on his bucks’ night. He got drunk and invited everyone!” Ruth said.

“Oh well, that’s men for ya, luv; even the good ones have their moments.”

“You always make me laugh, Joyce, I’m so glad you came.”

“A bullock train wouldn’t have kept us away.” Joyce gave Ruth an extra big hug.

Fezariu’s Epiphany (The Elencheran Chronicles)
Kindle $2.99, 387 pp.

At age 12, Fezariu believes that his mother died when he was a baby. However, when his beloved stepfather dies, Fezariu learns that his mother is alive, working at the most famous brothel in all of Elenchera. When she cruelly rejects him, he deals with the unbearable pain by running away to join a band of ruthless soldiers for hire. The Merelax Mercenaries will fight for anyone who can pay, regardless of the cause or its justness.

Fezariu’s Epiphany follows Fezariu as he grows up among the soldiers and becomes one of them. He thinks his time with the mercenaries has hardened him. But a campaign in his old home town pushes him too far. He discovers what really happened to his mother. Maybe there are some things money shouldn’t buy … and maybe it’s time Fezariu took his revenge.

Excerpt

“Vincent released his grip on Jessamine’s throat and retreated towards the door. He glanced at the broken glass on the floor before looking back at Jessamine. He grimaced at the transparent fear in her eyes and felt a hint of empathy in recognition of the corner he had forced her into. The understanding did not last and Vincent opened the door and stepped into the corridor. ‘This is for the best, Jessamine,’ he said. ‘Take some time to think about it. I know you’ll make the right decision. You always do.’

Vincent slammed the door shut and made his way quickly down the stairs. Jessamine listened to his footsteps and only felt the racing of her heart begin to ease as those footfalls faded. Jessamine reached for her throat and immediately gasped at the pain projecting from the surface of her skin, the earliest signs of bruising from Vincent’s misogynistic grip. She turned to massaging her stomach and became lost in thoughts of the child who grew within.”

Reviews

“There are many plot twists and turns in this masterfully written book chronicling the life of a mercenary named Fezariu. Fezariu’s Epiphany is a fantasy work on a grand scale in which you enter an imaginatively drawn world filled with many lands and spanning great periods of time.” ~    Jason Sullivan,  author of The Dark Yergall

“When a reader that normally does not like fantasy novels set in world with unknown names falls in love with a book from that genre, then you know the author did a spectacular job of bringing his story to life for all to enjoy. I am that reader, and for me to sit down and read it from cover to cover says a lot about the book and the author. I highly recommend this book to readers of all genres. ~ Talina Perkins , Night Owl Reviews “Top pick”

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