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VOL. 28 • NO. 2 • SUMMER 2014

Secrets of the Olive Julie Angus, P.5

Gender Failure Ivan E. Coyote, Rae Spoon, P.7

Compassionate Hunting Miles Olson, P.9 fictionfiction issueissue

Debut novelist DOGGED Maureen Brownlee’s deeply-felt Loggers’ Daughters is one of 50 new works PHOTO

KEIL of B.C. fiction. PUBLICATION MAIL AGREEMENT #40010086

SEE PAGES 13-33 LAURA

Life & death at William Head Station P. 11 • BC Book Prizes P. 20 2 BC BOOKWORLD SUMMER 2014 NEWS BCTOP* SELLERS

The Market Gardener (New Society Publishers $24.95) by Jean-Martin Fortier • A Timeless Place: The Ontario Cottage (UBC Press $32.95) by Julia Harrison • Allen Carr’s Easy Way to Stop Smoking (Sandhill Book Marketing $19.95) by Allen Carr • This Day in Vancouver (Anvil Press $38) by Jesse Donaldson SUN

VANCOUVER

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PERRIN IS GOVERNMENTAL WARD

EN YEARS AGO, CANADA’S PUBLIC SAFETY Marijuana plants marijuana grow ops that challenges claims made by the RCMP in East Vancouver, minister Anne McLellan an and media regarding organized crime, violence and public safety. from Killer Weed: That justice department report is corroborated by scholarly nounced that the federal government was Marijuana Grow Ops, research — but the justice department study was never re- T Media and Justice committed to eradi-cating marijuana growing op- leased. Boyd and Carter obtained a copy of the unreleased study from a reporter who received it following a Freedom of Infor- erations and that people who smoke marijuana are stupid. mation request. The Angelic Occurrence (Red Tuque Books $21.95) “I see grow-ops as one of the single biggest problems we face in our “The second important finding,” says Boyd, “concerns civil initiatives by Henry Ripplinger communities,” Anne McLellan declared. and by-laws, municipal multi-partner initiatives that have sprung up all That’s hogwash, says Susan Boyd, a UVic academic, one of two over B.C. and elsewhere since 2004. There is little oversight of these initia- Love You More researchers who have collected and analysed more than 2500 newspaper tives as they are outside criminal justice. (Orca Books $9.95) articles related to marijuana published in national, provincial and local news- by Susan Musgrave & “BC Hydro, the city government, police, RCMP, firefighters and electri- illustrated by Esperança Melo papers in B.C. from 1995 to 2009 and she’s concluded the widespread scare cal inspectors all work to identify high electrical usage, and then enter homes • tactics are a government smokescreen for unwarranted invasions of civil without a warrant, and there is an assumption of guilt rather than innocence.

Sabotage (Sono Nis $10.95) liberties. These homeowners are fined regardless of whether or not evidence of mari- by Karen Autio Co-written by Boyd and , a senior policy analyst for • Connie Carter juana growing is found.” Camping B.C. and Yukon: the Canadian Drug Policy Coalition, Killer Weed: Marijuana Grow Ops, According to the authors of Killer Weed, a fifteen-year drug scare about The Complete Guide to Media, and Justice (University of Toronto $28.95) documents fifteen marijuana grow ops has helped to facilitate changes in federal law, manda- National, Provincial, and years of exaggeration and scare tactics about marijuana growing fueled by a tory minimum sentencing for some drug offences, including growing more Territorial Parks, Expanded 7th Edition few vocal spokespeople, the RCMP and media. than five plants (resulting in six-month jail sentences), as well as changes in (Heritage House $19.95) Specifically, on page 146, Killer Weed discusses the so-called smart me- the medical marijuana program (eliminating personal growing and designated by Jayne Seagrave ters that have been forced upon BC Hydro customers. growers), and changes to provincial legislation. • Boyd and Carter conclude in their final chapter that the public is being “We question these changes,” says Boyd, “and the turn to law and order Seize the Time: Vancouver Photographed duped into compliance with draconian, anti-marijuana policies. They cite responses, many that contravene charter rights, and the impact on vulner- 1967-1974 the findings of the federal government’s justice department’s own study on able populations such as youth, aboriginal people and the poor.” 9781442612143 (New Star Books $24) by Vladimir Keremidschieff • Vancouver Is Ashes: The Great Fire of 1886 (Ronsdale Press $21.95) HELL NO, WE WILL GROW IN BC by Lisa Anne Smith • “A ‘No’ uttered from the deepest conviction is ary intimidation, the Castlegar-based paper The Arrow The Book of Kale better than a ‘Yes’ merely uttered to please or, worse, and the Goat Mountain School (the first alternative school to avoid trouble.” & Friends – Mahatma Gandhi to emerge within the West Kootenay counter-culture). (D&M $26.95) AVING INTERVIEWED FIFTY-TWO PEOPLE IN THE KOOTENAYS Interviewees include American-born NDP cabinet minis- by Sharon Hanna & Carol Pope over the course of three summers for her aca- • H ter Corky Evans, long-serving New Denver Mayor Poachers, Polluters demic study, Welcome to Resisterville: American Gary Wright and American-born authors Ross & Politics Dissidents in British Columbia (UBC $95), Kathleen Klatte, Irene Mock and Herb Hammond. (Harbour $24.95) Rodgers has documented the motives of American From Rodgers’ sociological approach we learn: by Randy Nelson refuseniks who entered Canada between 1965 and 1975 • Conscription during the Vietnam War may have • in response to the Vietnam War. driven 100,000 young Americans to leave their country. Go Barley (Touchwood Editions $29.95) “By believing in peace, justice and meaningful ways • Up to 14,000 Americans during the Vietnam War by Linda Whitworth & Pat Inglis of living,” she writes, “they showed subsequent genera- could have taken the ‘underground railroad’ to the • tions that protest is not only waving a placard; it includes Kootenays. The World Afloat: refusing to take part in something you don’t believe in.” • Fifty thousand Americans chose to stay in Canada Miniatures American-born resister Bob The subtitle is a tad misleading: Rodgers has studied after the U.S. government offered amnesty to draft re- (Talonbooks $12.95) Winegar was tree planting a specific group in a specific place at a specific time. sisters in 1976, and forty percent settled in B.C. by M.A.C. Farrant near Golden in 1975 when he PHOTO “This book is about the endurance of idealism,” she returned from a burned-out • In 2006, American-born immigrants accounted * The current topselling titles

writes. Subjects includes Argenta Quakers, New Denver, PLOSS for 25% of the foreign-born population of the from major BC publishing area covered in soot. companies, in no particular order. Doukhobors, tree planting, environmentalism, reaction- BOB West Kootenays. 9780774827331

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3 BC BOOKWORLD SUMMER 2014 4 BC BOOKWORLD SUMMER 2014 review NON-FICTION

OLIVE LOVE: Julie Angus with her child Leif, alongside— reputedly—the oldest olive tree on the planet, on the island of Corsica. ALL YOU NEED IS

HAVING CROSSED THE ATLANTIC castles to scald unwelcome invad- Ocean in a rowboat for her first ers. At the Trevi olive museum in book, Rowboat in a Hurricane Umbria, she finds a bizarre list of — earning herself the distinction folk remedies that include boiling of being National Geographic Ex- a lizard in oil to reduce baldness plorer of the Year — Julie Angus and ringworm and boiling rusty gained the support of National nails in it to cure eye pain. Geographic for Olive Odyssey: The travelogue part of the Searching for the Secrets of the book is no less engaging than the Fruit that Seduced the World, scientific research. The couple this time exploring the Mediterra- weathers storms and mechanical nean by sailboat. “I have to say,” OLIVEJulie Angus weathers storms, civil war and a difficulties with the boat, and the says Joan Givner, who reviewed fact that they bring along their Angus’ first book for BCBW, colicky baby in search of the origins of the olive. 10-month-old son adds to the per- “this is one of the most interesting sonal side of the story. Angus is books I have read in a long time.” the sailboat. From there they fly to selling thousands of litres of olive falls short, it drops to the next still breastfeeding Leif, who turns Greece, explore Crete and finally oil that was mostly sunflower oil. category—“virgin” olive oil, with out to be colicky baby, causing BY JOAN GIVNER end their journey in the Middle Others were arrested for selling a an acidity level of up to 1.5%. Oil his mother many disturbed nights. Olive Odyssey: Searching for the Secrets East. Along the way they befriend mix of avocado, palm, sunflower, that is really unsatisfactory and Nevertheless, along the way he of the Fruit that Seduced the World by Julie Angus (Greystone $28.95) a series of lively characters as they and vegetable oil. not fit for human consumption develops a surprising taste for visit olive growers and experts in Place of origin for both olives (this includes 50% of Mediter- red pepper gratin and anchovies ULIE ANGUS’ MISSION IN OLIVE olive oil factories, museums and and oil is often given incorrectly, ranean oil) can be used for in- on toast. He even contributes to Odyssey is to discover how laboratories. since outside the European Union, dustrial purposes. Yet it is often the research by testing the bitter Jthe olive tree spread from En route, Angus extols the laws for protecting origin and chemically refined, sold as cheap olives from ancient trees. A histo- the Middle East to the other side health benefits of consuming olive quality are unenforceable. Kala- oil in supermarkets, and used in rian notes that there is a similarity of the Mediterranean. oil—fewer cases of Alzheimer’s mata olives sold outside Europe restaurants and pizzerias. between the immature palates of A Master’s degree in mo- and certain types of cancer, as well have probably not even been ✫ babies and those of early humans. lecular biology equips her for as greater longevity in regions grown in Greece. In order to ADVICE FOR ORDINARY CONSUM- ✫ an in-depth study of olive trees, where its consumption is high. remedy this situation, the Insti- ers and cooking experts on the ANGUS’S INITIAL INTEREST IN OLIVE combined with her proven re- That said, likely few readers will tute of Plant Genetics in Umbria hazards of selecting olive oil is oil was sparked years earlier by a sourcefulness as an adventurer. care to follow one centenarian’s is working to create markers perhaps the most practical aspect visit to her Syrian relatives who Since Phoenician sailors were recommendation for longevity: that detect the source of the oil. of the book, but Julie Angus also served fruit and oil from their probably responsible for its prop- drinking a cup of olive oil daily. Fortunately Canada, unlike the provides guidelines for hosting own olive groves. The greatest agation, Angus and her husband Angus also provides good U.S., has an accredited govern- an olive oil tasting party (there disappointment of the trip is that follow their trading route, gather- advice on choosing oil. Caution ment laboratory that tests olive are 250 types of olive oil flavours the civil war prevents her from ing samples from ancient trees is essential because the olive oil oil. Even so, inferior oil on the compared with wine’s 450) and concluding it in Aleppo where it along the way. The resulting ac- business is one of the most cor- supermarket shelves is commonly also appends a series of recipes. began. Yet she feels triumphant count is part travelogue and part rupt in the world. Fraud has been mislabelled. Adjectives such as One is a Provencal recipe for when the bags of samples are ex- compendium of facts about olives rampant from the beginning. A “light,” “pure” and “extra light” cooking a chicken in a cup of ol- amined for their genetic structure and olive oil. fifth century Roman cookbook are applied to substandard oil ive oil with forty cloves of garlic. at the Institute of Plant Genetics. The couple’s odyssey starts in lists tricks for disguising rancid that is refined using chemicals, For those who wish more They are found to provide evi- Spain, where for $11,000 they buy or fetid oil; a Greek book gives a process that strips away both background information on the dence that it was the Phoenicians Isis, a 28-foot-long, second-hand a remedy for restoring oil into flavour and nutrients. food they ingest, Angus outlines who spread the olive tree through- sailboat. Their quest to find where which a mouse has drowned, The highest grade of oil bears the history and mythology of the out Europe. 978-1553655145 the first olive tree originated takes spoiling the flavour. (Suspend a the label “extra virgin” and comes olive tree and olive oil. Its uses them from Spain to the French handful of coriander over it!) from the first pressing of the ol- have ranged from the medicinal Since reading Olive Odyssey, Riviera and on to Corsica, where In the 1980s adulterated oil ives, done by mechanical means, and sacramental to the military. Joan Givner says she has become they tour the island by car and sickened twenty-five thousand without using heat or chemicals. The Romans used it to lubricate very discriminating in her selec- camp overnight. Eventually they people in Spain and killed a The acidity level is crucial and their military machines. In the tion of olive oil. Her latest young arrive in Sardinia, make a side trip thousand. In 2011 two Spanish should be less than 0.8%. It must Middle Ages, boiling oil was adult novel is The Hills Are to Italy by ferry, and return to sell olive businessmen were jailed for also pass a vigorous test. If it poured from the battlements of Shadows (Thistledown Press).

5 BC BOOKWORLD SUMMER 2014 THE BEST OF SUMMER READING

The Deerholme Foraging Book Wild Foods and Recipes from the Pacific Northwest Bill Jones This ultimate guide to foraging in the Pacific Northwest features more than 110 recipes for local edible plants, sea vegetables, and shellfish, and includes techniques for harvesting, processing, and preserving foraged products. TouchWood Editions | $29.95 pb | $24.99 ebook

Food Artisans of Vancouver Island Okanagan Slow Road The Cuckoo’s Child A Family by Any Other Name and the Gulf Islands Bernadette McDonald, with images Margaret Thompson Exploring Queer Relationships Don Genova by Karolina Born-Tschümperlin Searching for her family, Livvy embarks Edited by Bruce Gillespie on a journey that takes her from small-town A guide to the best food and producers of Exploring the entire length of the Okanagan This collection features twenty-one British Columbia to the English countryside Vancouver Island and the Gulf Islands Valley, this guide to the region’s best food, reflective essays on relationships from and teaches her about loss and grief, compiled by beloved food writer Don Genova, drink, and recreation reveals local culinary lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgendered secrets and guilt, and the transcendent based on his firsthand experiences with secrets, famous vintages, and favourite activities writers, and explores how they have importance of family and love. the featured products and producers. to be enjoyed by locals and tourists alike. reclaimed the word “family.” TouchWood Editions | $29.95 pb | $24.99 ebook Brindle & Glass Publishing | $19.95 pb | $14.99 ebook TouchWood Editions | $19.95 pb | $14.99 ebook TouchWood Editions | $19.95 pb | $14.99 ebook

Camping British Columbia Canoe Crossings Haida Gwaii The Spanish on the and Yukon Understanding the Craft That Islands of the People, Northwest Coast The Complete Guide to National, Helped Shape British Colombia Fourth Edition For Glory, God, and Gain Provincial,and Territorial Campgrounds, Sanford Osler Dennis Horwood Rosemary Neering Expanded Seventh Edition Canoe Crossings will appeal to anyone who This updated guide, complete with maps, In her newest book, popular bc history Jayne Seagrave has ever sought adventure, found solace, regional histories, wildlife descriptions, and writer Rosemary Neering has created a or seen beauty in a canoe. Sanford Osler recreation tips, will prepare travellers with In this revamped edition of a bc classic, concise introduction to two centuries of weaves a fascinating account of the origins everything they need for a successful visit to author Jayne Seagrave has added an Spanish maritime explorers on the bc of the canoe in bc and its potential for these glorious gems of the Pacific. entire section on camping in Yukon. An coast. Great for readers of all ages. bringing people together. Heritage House Publishing | $19.95 pb | $9.99 ebook essential guide for today’s camper. Heritage House Publishing | $9.95 pb | $7.99 ebook Heritage House Publishing | $19.95 pb | $9.99 ebook Heritage House Publishing | $19.95 pb | $9.99 ebook

Popular Day Hikes 3 Popular Day Hikes 4 Seaside Walks on Great Walks of the World Northern Okanagan: Vernon - Shuswap - Lumby Vancouver Island Vancouver Island D. Larraine Andrews Gerry Shea Theo Dombrowski Theo Dombrowski An eclectic collection of 12 global walks, the book includes destinations on every continent Covering the interior of British Columbia, This unique and colourful guidebook sorts The perfect book for those who love to explore but Antarctica. From one-day saunters to from Grindrod in the north to Vernon in the through the various possibilities and selects the seashore but also love walking through two-week odysseys, readers will find the story south, between the Okanagan Valley and the for the reader the very best day hikes on forests and seaside meadows. Whether behind each trail, with detailed maps and Shuswap, this fully illustrated guidebook Vancouver Island. Ranging from 6 km to discovering inviting stretches of sandy beach, colourful photos. The author has also included features colour maps and photographs, 25 km and from easy to challenging, each hiking along rugged cliffs, or strolling through information on Internet resources, reading lists, step-by-step directions, and 35 popular hike is accompanied by a clear map, step-by- quiet estuaries, each walk is illustrated with food specialties, and unique customs. day hikes in stunning and open terrain. step directions, and colour photographs. colour photos and step-by-step directions. RMB | Rocky Mountain Books | $15.00 pb | $9.99 ebook RMB | Rocky Mountain Books | $15.00 pb | $9.99 ebook RMB | Rocky Mountain Books | $30.00 pb | $16.99 ebook RMB | Rocky Mountain Books | $15.00 pb | $9.99 ebook

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6 BC BOOKWORLD SUMMER 2014 G ENDER

This excerpt from Gender Failure have a masculine appearing chest after. He uninvited, I have always tried to mash them way I knew to keep going. by Ivan E. Coyote is reprinted with looks at his assistant, is she getting all of down, disappear them, never lift and sepa- He pulls out a blue Sharpie and makes permission. The following is a candid this down? And she nods back just a little, rate, so I actually have no idea how big they several marks on my chest, then stands account of preparing for surgery. yes, she is. really are. Turns out I have a forty-two-inch back and surveys them. Like you would if Throughout this entire bureaucratic chest, a number that seems surreal to me, you were trying to hang a picture level on was so nervous, the secre- maze, I have wanted to not like the doctors, nearly impossible. I explain to the surgeon a wall. Then he takes a camera out, snaps tary at the reception desk the psychiatrist, the surgeon. The gatekeep- that they didn’t used to be this big, just since several pictures of me from the neck down, ers. I have been waiting for one of them to I hit my forties, my body is changing, and if and then puts it away. looked at me with soften- I be callous, or say something phobic or use he performed double hipectomies I would He explains to me that I will need a ing eyes and told me everything the wrong pronoun, or write the wrong thing be signing up for that, too. He is calling out double incision/bi-lateral mastectomy, and was going to be okay. I had down on the wrong form. But everyone measurements and observations to his as- that my nipples will be rendered insensate. has been so … nice. Even though I still sistant. My breast tissue is dense and firm, He delivers this news deadpan, like he’s had barely spoken to her, but it was care about whether or not I can feel my he states. She scribbles on her notepad. My a lot of practice saying these words without just that obvious, I guess. nipples afterwards. I never quite feel like nipples are big and will have to be removed any affectation or emotion whatsoever. they truly understand me, but that doesn’t completely from my body and resized and Insensate. I looked it up after, later, when I First of all, it didn’t feel like there seem to get in the way of them completing grafted back onto me. He remarks that my got home. It has two meanings: 1: lacking was any possible way this could really the task at hand. breasts exhibit very little ptosis, which is a physical sensation. And 2: lacking sympa- be happening. Nineteen years of binding I have to strip my upper body and put medical term for sagging. This makes me thy or compassion, unfeeling. my breasts, even more years trying not to on a blue gown. The surgeon measures my feel oddly proud, considering I am here to The surgeon narrows his eyes at my hate them, a psychologist’s appointment, a chest extensively. I haven’t worn a typical have them removed. Kind of like waxing up copious chest hair. “You have never taken psychiatrist’s appointment, a psychological woman’s bra in my entire life, and I don’t your car so you can take it to the wrecker, testosterone?” he asks me again. I shake my assessment, two doctor’s appointments, mean there is any such thing as a typical or petting a puppy before you leave it out head, no. “Well, there is something going several letters back and forth between woman, let me be clear, what I mean is a in the cold. Which, for the record, I would on for you here, then,” he tells me. doctors and shrinks and bureaucrats, phone bra-type article of clothing typically worn never do. I love puppies. But even talking “Positive thinking,” I tell him, and he calls, more phone calls, twenty months by a woman, anyway, I have never owned aloud about it all felt kind of like that for smiles, like this can’t be true, even though since I had actually cranked the whole or worn one, ever since I was nineteen or me, like I was closing a door on a room I I am pretty sure it is. machine into gear, and here I was. Meeting so and they finally appeared on the scene really loved, only because it was the one He measures my nipples from tip to tip, the surgeon. He was fourteen minutes late. lets out a low whistle. “Wow,” he says, But who was counting? sounding impressed. “Thirteen inches.” He was handsome and tanned in Janu- His assistant raises her head, looks over at ary, and his assistant was tall, blonde, and us, writes it down. I have no idea what this wearing grey leather stiletto boots. Looked means, whether this number is impressive pretty much like what I thought a cosmetic because it is so small, or so big. surgeon and his assistant would look like, “Yep,” I state. “That’s right. Thirteen not that I had ever spent much time won- THE SUCCESS inches, uncut.” We all crack up. My nipples dering. I have to fill out forms, of course, are standing on their tiptoes now, maybe no I don’t smoke or have hemophilia, and from the cool air in the examination room, no, my religion does not forbid me to have maybe from brushing up against the mea- a blood transfusion. The letterhead on the suring tape, maybe from fear. Hard to say. forms is for a cosmetic surgery clinic. I OF FAILURE I did and still do wonder why he wasn’t am reminded that most people think that is using the metric system of measurement. what this is. Elective. Cosmetic. Unneces- “Being a girl was something that never really hap- Thirty-three point zero two centimeters sary. My period is due today. My tits are sounds way more accurate somehow, even at their biggest, and most tender. I can feel pened for me,” says Rae Spoon, co-author of Gender though the metric system is decidedly less the binder pinching under my arms where Failure (Arsenal $17.95), along with Ivan E. Coyote. sexy. Maybe that is why the United States it does. stubbornly holds on to the standard system Turns out the doctor and I both stud- It sounds like a clever thing to say to grab attention. But one of measurement. Its undeniable erotic po- ied music at a small community college need only dip into any page of this mutual tell-all to understand how tential. Thirteen inches seems impressive, together in the late eighties. I do not re- that statement has been true for both of these writer-performers especially when it is a body part of any sort. member him, and he would not recognize who have grappled with the limitations of traditional gender roles. And ninety miles an hour sounds so much me. I ask him if he studied jazz piano just Coyote’s straight-forward, sometimes amusing, yet difficult-to- hotter and faster than one hundred and forty- in case this whole cosmetic surgeon thing share account of having breasts surgically removed is a break- four point eight four kilometers ever could. didn’t work out for him, you know, so he through in candour even for Coyote. This is clear, honest and wisely The next morning, I looked long at my- had something to fall back on. I make jokes non-propagandist reportage from the front lines of an on- self in the mirror. Tried to imagine my new like that sometimes when I am nervous. going battle to bring transgenderism into mainstream chest. Touched my exquisitely sensi- He asks me a lot of questions. Why am awareness. Coyote is smart enough to eschew tive nipples. Imagined them small, I not on testosterone? Do I intend to go didacticism. Meanwhile Coyote and Spoon know and dull to touch, and stitched on testosterone in the future? What full well how much leadership is entailed back on. I have done this a mil- do I want my chest to look like in their work, how much their work mat- lion times before. But this time when he is done? Do I care ters to the LGBT sector of society. For there were two blue marks, in more about what my chest Coyote to continually walk the line the soft crease there, dead centre looks like, or whether or between educator and entertainer below my nipples. I had scrubbed not I will be able to feel my with such an endearing, saucy and and scrubbed at them in the nipples afterwards? I tell provocative intelligence—smartly re- shower, but they wouldn’t come him a little of both. This taining loyalty to an earnest and effec- off, they had hardly even faded. surprises him. He tells me tive B.C. publisher—reaffirms Coyote’s The ink the surgeon had used had it is mostly only women who position as one of the most important been very, very permanent. care about nipple sensation literary artists in Canada. 9781551525365 after surgery, and that most trans men only care that they Rae Spoon and Ivan E. Coyote

7 BC BOOKWORLD SUMMER 2014 Bob BossinBossin Celebrating 32 years Claire CameronCameron

Jillian ChristmasChristmas

Terry FallisFallis

Charles ForanForan

Steven GallowayGalloway

Rockwood Centre | Sechelt Bill GastonGaston August 14 -17 2014 Linda HolemanHoleman

Aislinn HunterHunter Tickets now on sale Zaccheus JacksonJackson

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- COMMENTS FROM FESTIVAL 2013 AUDIENCE SURVEYS Priscila UppalUppal

Richard WagameseWagamese tel: 604.885.9631| toll free: 1.800.565.9631 Alison WearingWearing www.writersfestival.ca Dianne WhelanWhelan

8 BC BOOKWORLD SUMMER 2014 review NON-FICTION Recently someone paid $350,000 In Miles Olson ’s guidebook for tochthonous connection to nature. to kill a rare black rhino in compassionate hunting, he expresses feelings of We can see the obstructions to it Namibia. Reviewer Giles Slade that intrude from every aspect of views trophy-hunting as a per- deep respect and reverence toward his prey. contemporary urban life. We can verted act by fools too dumb see the long line of evolutionary to operate a camera. But he and historical connection to our recognizes that many Canadians F U T U R E human past. can’t get to a supermarket easily, We can see that first starving and the tradition of finding and herbivorous hominid desperately killing one’s own food runs very sampling carrion on the African deep in rural Canada. Here he Savanna. We can see his or her responds to Miles Olson’s “New descendants accumulating an Age” manual for conscious living, ever-expanding array of strategies The Compassionate Hunter’s connected to the stunning new Guidebook. PRIMITIVE ability to make-things-dead. We can see how the craft of BY GILES SLADE making-things-dead evolves into

The Compassionate Hunter’s Guidebook: ritualized genres of public art Hunting from the Heart by Miles Olson (New Society Publishers $19.95) whose controversial remnants are still among us in the forms of bullfighting and fox hunting. HE EXTERMINATION And so some things that of the American were obscene to us can now be Bison was made viewed with new eyes. T An encounter with death is possible by an unholy trin- a very rare thing in our society. ity after the Civil War: the Some claim it is the constant re- minder of mortality that enriches monomania of American life and makes it poignant. This greed, Spencer’s flawless certainly seems to be the case in the developing countries in which repeating rifles, and the I’ve lived. You are surrounded by miracle of transcontinen- death and people seem more alive. tal rail travel. Here, in North America’s sterile absence of death, we use No one owned the limitless recreational drugs or the empty buffalo herds of the Great Plains. thrill-experiences of extreme At the railhead, the bison’s car- sports to remind us that we are cass was worth $3. The single vibrant, mortal creatures, not shell to kill one American Bison replaceable cogs in an economic cost only 25 cents. This 11-fold matrix. Nowadays children’s profit abruptly ended all empathy burning ambition to live full-tilt for the beasts sparking a bloody lives is somehow quickly dis- gold rush that lasted until the placed into online avatars. No plains were completely emptied. one actually runs away to join At almost the same moment, the Foreign Legion any more. owners of American slaughter- Instead, they buy Halo. houses invented assembly lines Like an antidote, Miles Olson to kill and butcher cattle in tech- reminds us that even now… nologically efficient factories of nologized, industrial slaughter. our emotions and spirit: of craft and culture. Craft is how “Bucks are roaming the woods death. It was the assembly line In doing so, Olson doesn’t “To adequately address the hominids adapt to nature. chasing the scent of fertile does of the abattoir that Henry Ford pretend to be DeNiro in The Deer- depth of the subject, [my manu- Olson understands such with little regard for anything copied when he first began to hunter. This book is not a nostal- script] had to become a guidebook things, inherently, but he does other than sex and establishing manufacture his model T. gic, romantic fantasy by Feni- for compassionate hunting,” he not proselytize or preach. Instead dominance. Does, likewise, are So now, if we want to kill for more Cooper, or a terse ideology writes, “for those who hunt for he reports that to kill for one’s less cautious as they start to ovu- food, can we step outside of the of masculinity by Hemingway. any or all of the above ethical own meat, consciously, can be a late… their bodies fill with excite- tyranny of our own history and Olson is connected to his practice. and economic reasons, but who spiritual process by which we can ment… Their changing scent… economic structures long enough He understands its meaningful- also feel a sense of deep respect “[get] to something … through bring[s]… potential lovers. to experience real life and real ness and fulfillment. He knows and reverence toward their prey, connecting with … food. [You “For a time this annual dance living without falling into the why we need it, and he brings it to who are interested in approaching might understand] our separation of courtship… eclipses all else… Freemen’s stereotype of a redneck our attention with humility. hunting (and all of life) as some- from the living world. [and] the deer are possessed by an man-of-the-woods? ✫ thing sacred.” “When you kill and eat a insatiable urge. As I sit shiftlessly Miles Olson thinks so. He MILES OLSON WAS INITIALLY GOING The Compassionate Hunter’s creature, you are very literally in the woods, the feeling is pal- knows so. Having learned to hunt to call this book The Ethical Guidebook is a book about the integrating its body into yours. pable… there is an overwhelming for game on Vancouver Island, Hunter’s Guidebook, “an explora- ideology, empathy and spiritu- You are also integrating the land sense of activity, electricity and ex- as well as forage for other food, tion of and guide to hunting from ality of craft, and craft is what … [the] creature came from into citement… Even if I don’t see any Olson has evolved a deeply felt a conscious, ethical perspective,” technology replaces. According your body, since their body was deer today, I'll still have harvested “back-to-the-land” philosophy but he changed his mind and al- to Richard Sennet’s wonderful entirely a manifestation of that a deep feeling of groundedness.” and practice, first explored in his tered the adjective. “Ethics are by book, The Craftsman, it is the land. This is an amazing, dynamic The Compassionate Hunter’s groundbreaking Unlearn, Rewild: definition products of the rational one dimension of our modern that … lies at the … heart of … Guidebook does what any good Earth Skills, Ideas and Inspiration mind,” he writes, “logical conclu- world that is ignored and under- people’s desire to connect to the book should do. It takes you into for the Future Primitive (New sions about the nature of reality nourished. Its absence leaves us land … through gardening, hik- another world and makes you Society 2012). from which we build our sense of considerably poorer than our pre- ing, foraging, crafting or hunting: understand new people. Now his The Compassionate right and wrong. They are matters decessors. In Shop Class as Soul “[It shatters] the boundary be- I am a writer, not a hunter. I Hunter’s Guidebook takes us back of the intellect…” Craft: An Inquiry into the Value tween self and other, human and enjoyed the book immensely. I to the connectedness of the craft What Olson is seeking in the of Work, Matthew Crawford nature; [and pierces] the illusion did not think I would. 978-0865717701 of individualized hunting when it woods in the vicinity of his home has explained why we become of separation that … defines our was still a vital nutritional strat- in Courtenay has little to do with depressed without the demands culture.” Giles Slade’s most recent egy; it takes us back to the craft intellect. It’s more like Zen. He of an interesting task. Unlike all Reading this passage we can book is American Exodus of hunting as it was before tech- asks us to watch and engage with other creatures, we are creatures see the how and the why of our au- (New Society 2013)

9 BC BOOKWORLD SUMMER 2014 6DQGKLOOWKDQNVRXUUHDGHUVIRUJUHDW\HDUV -XVWUHOHDVHG

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10 BC BOOKWORLD SUMMER 2014 INTERVIEW

ou’ve probably heard of Ellis Island in New York where millions of Yimmigrants were pro- cessed as they arrived by sea.

But you might not have heard of two Canadian equivalents, Lawlor’s Island in Halifax and Grosse Isle. The latter was a quarantine station in Quebec that processed half a million Irish immigrants from 1832 to 1848. Five thou- sand never made it off the island. Many were detained to prevent the spread of typhus. Almost nobody remembers there was an equivalent West Coast quarantine centre, William Head Station, southwest of Victo- ria, on William Head Peninsula. Even most coastal history mavens don’t know it grew to hold up to 1,000 people in 42 buildings on a 43-hectare site until maritime immigration diminished in the fif- Graveyard at the former quarantine station, now William Head Institution, ties and it was transformed into a minimum a medium security prison that is off-limits to the public. security prison. As a follow-up to his Voyages of Hope: The Saga of the Bride-Ships (TouchWood, call them a labour corps. 2002), a bestseller on B.C. Ferries, Peter BCBW: Just providing a service... Johnson has collected the details of PJ: Providing a service and we'll pay them how West Coast officialdom prevented the 30 cents a day, whereas a regular soldier spread of smallpox, cholera, typhus, and would make $1.30 a day. I have to hand polio into the Canadian population from GANGPLANK it to the British War office as they really sea travelers in Quarantined: Life and organized this fast movement. Think of Death at William Head Station, 1872- it: little Chinese villages on the northern 1959 (Heritage $22.95). frontier, they wouldn't be interested in The following interview with Peter John- fighting in Europe. Europe was a war-mad son was conducted by Mark Forsythe. continent as far as the Chinese peasants DIAGNOSIS were concerned, but somehow they would BC BookWorld: If you were detained recruit thousands of Chinese peasants, at William Head Station, how could you How William Head Station prevented disas- many of them illiterate. expect to be treated? ters of epidemic proportions—at a great cost. BCBW: When they arrived on B.C. shores Peter Johnson: Well, the quarantine some were quarantined, and essentially system was arranged on the class system quarantined again as they travelled across of the British Empire. You could be first the country in sealed railway cars? class—aristocracy; second class—sons of general influenza wasn’t there, but in fact Europe with their war, then perhaps Europe PJ: That's how the Prime Minister waived aristocracy; third class—the middle class; it was smallpox. would help them rid them of the Japanese. the head tax... if we keep them in sealed or else the poor sods in steerage. The And so there were several missed cases Of course it never happened. trains there won't have to be a head tax. politics of privilege and the economics of of physicians who simply didn’t have the BCBW: What were the jobs of the Chinese The other reason was not to let the Chinese indifference kept Ottawa from taking on diagnostic traditions we have today for Labour Corps? community across the country know what much responsibility. catching infectious disease. I’m surprised PJ: They did everything from repairing they were doing because the Chinese com- BCBW: How did it all come about? that so many were held and it worked. tanks to working in steel and chemical munities, still embittered by the CPR not PJ: Part of the contract of joining confeder- Some of the ones that were missed of plants, loading and unloading ships at port, living up to the agreement of paying them ation was that the federal government would course went on to horrific outbreaks in shoring up the trenches, building huts, sand- properly after the building of the railway, provide British Columbia with quarantine Vancouver and other places, which brought bagging, railway lines, the Chinese Labour would notify the Chinese Labour Corps on services. Well it never did. In the whole quarantine station Corps—96,000 of them they think—really the trains and get them the hell out. 1871 when B.C. joined Canada into some question. enabled the front lines to keep going. It took They were also afraid that the Germans there wasn't even a federal BCBW: And this affected a year to organize and the Brits didn't tell might catch on to this. And so they came quarantine office here. our international relation- the Chinese what they were doing because by ship, 50 to 60 days from China, another It took almost another 20 ship with Seattle who said, China was neutral. China never entered the 10 days waiting in a sealed part of William years for Ottawa to get its act “We won’t accept ships from First World War until August of 1917, so Head Quarantine Station. There were just together — they were shamed Vancouver because we can’t all of this is happening two years before the too many of them, a quarantine station was into it by a little white girl that MarkForsythe be assured we not also import- outbreak of war. constructed to handle 1,000 people and died without access to any ing disease.” BCBW: They were put into extremely many of those would be in tents. kind of station whatsoever. Meanwhile PJ: We didn't have adequate quarantine dangerous situations weren’t they? Suddenly by August of 1917 there were the Chinese were clobbered with a head legislation. We started from ground zero far PJ: It was actually horrific. The Chinese 30,000 Chinese labourers at William Head. tax, and in 1903 it doubled to 500 dollars. too late to be of any real benefit in the last would come from three routes: from around It was a horror story... they filed out into the Often quarantine legislation was used to ten years of the 19th century. But, by the Cape Town to the Western Front, through community of Metchosin and stole doors support policies of deportation or policies Twenties, by God, British Columbia had its the Suez Canal and around the Horn to and fence posts to lie on, to keep them out of racism. That’s a common theme that runs act together. When the Albert Head station Vancouver and when they did get to France of the rain, and raided the gardens for food. throughout the book. closed for letting too many people slip by it was an absolute horror. They landed at There were food riots. BCBW: But obviously there were times with infectious diseases, William Head was Dunkirk and were fired upon. They were BCBW: How many of these labourers when quarantine was necessary. rebuilt and it did a fine job. gassed as they moved along the line from transitted through Canada and came back? PJ: Yes.Think of the times. The germ BCBW: As you trace the history of quar- the Somme to Ypres and were involved in PJ: Numbers vary, I would say a minimum theory had only been around for 10-15 antine in B.C., you also tell us about the whatever front line attacks were going on. of 84,000 went across Canada, probably years. Germs were thought to be caused by Chinese Labour Corps. What was their role They were a noncombatant force! They 40,000 of those came back to William miasma, not bacteria. A doctor at the bot- in World War I? were called the Chinese Labour Corps, Head, where they got rid of them as fast as tom of a gangplank checking a vaccination PJ: It’s such a sad episode. It was mutually and that was Churchill’s idea because if they could. It became a terrible footnote to certificate would have to, within a second, beneficial for China to send labourers to the we recruit men in the regular army from the First World War. 978-1-92752-731-3 say, “were you anywhere near or associated European theatre of war and for Britain who the hinterlands of the Chinese Mongolian with this person who is ill?” Then take a needed these labourers. The new Chinese frontier that’ll break Chinese neutrality, so Mark Forsythe is host of B.C. Almanac temperature, look into the eyes and see that government thought that if they helped let’s pretend they are a volunteer force and on CBC Radio, weekdays, noon-1:00 pm.

11 BC BOOKWORLD SUMMER 2014 12 BC BOOKWORLD SUMMER 2014 A to Z

FoodyFICTION criminologist Museum. Its theft, and the fact that a replica had been Cathy Ace of Maple Ridge is extending her mystery put in its place, was not discovered until an official series, using a precious material in each title, with visit by Queen Elizabeth II to the Maritime UNEASY The Corpse With the Emerald Thumb Museum in 1975. Bentley’s novel weaves fact and (Touchwood $14.95). This is the third novel featuring fiction. Divers want the cross for financial reasons; RIDER ON Cait Morgan, a bossy criminologist and gourmet who the Bermuda government wants it as an historical turns up bodies and solves crimes in varied artifact; but a group of cardinals known as locations. This time it’s Puerto Vallarta, where a the “Silenti” want it for a key that is hidden THE DEASE local florist is the victim. Nothing is what it inside. Only one of the divers and the seems, and Cait has a personal stake in cardinals are aware of the key and its BY CAROLINE WOODWARD discovering the killer. Ace turned to crime significance to the Papacy. So who made Grayling by Gillian Wigmore (Mother Tongue $16.95) writing after a communications career in the forgery? And who has the key? An avid the UK and Europe. Influenced by the sailor and scuba diver, B.R. Bentley has There is a longstanding Canadian practice that when things Nancy Drew character of her girlhood reading lived in South Africa, Canada and get too messy, painful and intensely complicated, we head as well as Agatha Christie, she says she strives Bermuda, chiefly employed as a for the bush. This rite of passage is evoked in Gillian to create “intricate plotting with a dash of banker and corporate executive. Wigmore’s new novella, Grayling, a runner-up in Mona Fertig’s annual ‘search for a great Canadian novel’ con- danger.” After dealing with silver and gold in 978-1-4602-4021-2 earlier mysteries, Ace has let it be known that Science fiction trilogy test, and reviewed here by Caroline Woodward. platinum will feature in her next Cait Morgan Yes, there’s a novelist living near 100 Mile O CLEAR THE HEAD, CLEANSE THE SOUL AND mystery, due this fall. 9781771510639 House. Samuel Blondahl was born in Victoria, toughen our bodies, we Canadians often like has lived in Vancouver and Kamloops, but has to go north and add the element of water. As we The T Break-in silence missing spent most of his life near 100 Mile House. He are thoughtful Canadians in anguish, we typically choose Sneaker Wave (Oolichan $22.95), the debut Tucker graduated from the Vancouver Institute of Media one of the non-winter seasons to launch ourselves in our Cross of iconic canoes. novel by newspaper editor Jeff Beamish, Bermuda Arts with a diploma in game art and design in We proceed to do battle with epic numbers of blackflies concerns the repercussions of violence after a 2009. He still creates digital art and occasionally and mosquitoes, coping with clouds of no-see-ums, lost popular resident confronts 17-year-old Brady Joseph builds 3D game models. The cover for his first sci-fi bait and blackened frying pans. Large mammals make their and three friends who have broken into an abandoned novel Mercury is his own design work. The first presence known but except for Marian Engel’s novel Bear, house to have a party. The teens’ code of silence keeps two novels of his projected trilogy were Mercury: most of us tend to leave other species discreetly alone. them out of jail, but at what price? 978-0-88982-278-8 The Anahita Chronicles Book I (Freedom of Speech A long list of our writers have made eloquent contribu- 2012) and War: The Anahita Chronicles Book II tions to what might be called the Canadian Transformative Bermuda heist (Freedom of Speech 2013). The third book in the Journey genre. In the case of Gillian Wigmore’s novella B.R. Bentley’s first novel, The Cross (Friesen trilogy Andromedae: The Anahita Chronicles Grayling, the protagonist named Jay heads north to Dease $19.99) is about an emerald-studded, 22 karat gold Book III is currently in production. Lake. Wigmore doesn’t let us know how exactly he got pectoral cross that was lost at sea in 1596 and Book I: 978-1938634307; Book II: 978-1938634314 there—or why. Prior to page one, having overcome a ma- salvaged from a sunken Spanish continued on page 15 jor health scare, Jay, a city veterinarian, has reached Ter- galleon by Bermudian diver race on Highway 16 and moved east to Kitwanga, turned Teddy Tucker in 1955, and headed north on Highway 37, and found Dease Lake. then stolen from the Why he wants to undertake a solo, two-week canoe Bermuda Maritime and fishing journey into the Dease River (which empties into Liard River, which leads to the great Mackenzie and the Arctic) is also not made clear. He’s been unwell, he’s still unhappy and he’s no Boy Scout. He only takes along a road map, not a topographical map. He plans to catch a grayling, he doesn’t plan to snag a girl. Enter a tall, competent woman on Day One who saves his hypothermic bacon. In fact, she offers bacon, coffee and tobacco and wants to join him. He’s not thrilled but he owes her and off they go in the same canoe. Their inti- macy grows—but for what purpose? Grayling is a page-turner that wears its dense layers lightly. Wigmore’s pitch-perfect language and brilliantly- paced unspooling of the plot (think fishing line, dancing here and there on the surface, then trying another lure for tugging through the depths for the eponymous prize, the Arctic grayling, then think of several tangled, strangled lines) makes for a deceptively slim book that packs a mighty wallop. The cover is exceptional and worthy of commenda- tion. The publisher has commissioned an evocative paint- ing of the locale called Dease River, 2013 by Prince Gillian Wigmore George-based Annerose Georgeson. 978-1-896949-37-6

Caroline Woodward is the author of Penny Loves Wade, Wade Loves Penny REVIEW (Oolichan 2010), a novel set in the Peace River.

13 BC BOOKWORLD SUMMER 2014 review FICTION

Loggers’ Daughters passionate women debating the by Maureen Brownlee (Oolichan $19.95) inequity of the Murdoch case, de- crying the court’s paternalist legal MAGINE BEING BORN SOME- A WOMAN NAMED decision as “bourgeois bullshit,” it where north of Quesnel, deep strengthens your resolve to stand Iin the inland rainforest of the up for what is owed to you. Rocky Mountain trench, back That’s just a glimmering of the in the early 40s, back when BC deep dignity of perseverance that Rail was still called the PGE and permeates the text of Loggers’ everyone called it Please Go Easy. Daughters. Anyone who sticks Everything you know about with the narration that bounces your parents comes from snip- back and forth between past and pets of conversation you weren’t present will probably agree Mau- meant to hear. Your grandparents reen Brownlee’s long-in-gestation, died in a collision with a train, and MaureenADARE Brownlee’s Loggers’ Daughters sounds like fully-fledged first novel deserves your mother inherited the farm a story that could have been set in the Ozarks, but to be heralded as a triumph. that is your childhood home; your it is a realistic and deeply-felt novel of central B.C. Quite likely this manuscript has father was specifically excluded, endured previous incarnations. No a continuous source of acrimony matter. It is now a mature work. between your parents. Then your For those old enough to remember father, injured in a bush accident, a Canadian writer named Marga- loses his source of income (and ret Laurence, it can be likened to pride) and becomes a very heavy an old fashioned Margaret Lau- drinker. rence novel. If you are not thirsty You’ll never know for certain, for mere cleverness, if you can ap- but maybe it is the bar bills at the preciate instead how each anecdote local hotel that one day persuade has been forged from experience, your parents to give you up to you will never forget the protago- the local hotel owners, a German nist, Adare Wilkins, in much the couple, or maybe they are Aus- same way you will always recall trian, and so you never get past the likes of Hagar Shipley in The the tenth grade. Stone Angel or Rachel Cameron in Essentially you are traded, like A Jest of God. chattel, forced to work as a perma- The title Logger’s Daughters nent, live-in employee, working and a cover image of a choker in the kitchen and cleaning the cable around a tree are far from hotel rooms. You don’t get paid. beguiling, and likely few readers You wonder why your protective beyond rural B.C are going to older brother Garth doesn’t come be comfortable with a novel that to your rescue but, of course, by doesn’t explain what a skidder is, this time he has finished his grade but Brownlee has wrangled and twelve and is off working in the honed a family saga until it has fi- PHOTO bush. You hate it. You run away nally emerged as a sublime testa- twice.

BREDEN ment to the strength of the women . L The only thing unusual about who maintain families within the you is your name, Adare. timber, ranch and constructions CYNTHIA “She wanted to go to the Maureen Brownlee’s book launches were at the Caribou Grill in Valemount, Dunster Hall and McBride Library. industries of the province. city,” writes Maureen Brown- Maureen Brownlee grew up lee, in her first novel, Loggers’ truck. Into a life of unremitting siderate brother Garth thinks the At this monumental gather- in Dunster and went to school in Daughters. “Get a job in a labour: cattle, haying, kids, and family farm should be sold four ing of a thousand women, you nearby McBride in the Robson bank. Or an office. Type. Smoke a nasty, bitter mother living just ways. There is no will. Your sib- learn about the fire-bombings of Valley. She lived in Arrow Lakes cigarettes in an ebony holder. across the gully. lings need and want a share. Ev- pornographic video stories by a and Prince George before moving Cigarettes lit by a gentleman in But you thrive here, save the eryone has delayed talking about secret group called the Wimmins’ to Valemount (also in the Robson a black fedora.” family farm, improve it. You can this while your mother was alive. Brigade. You also visit a women’s Valley) where she founded and Years go by. You marry a remember when you got indoor Then the best thing happens. shelter where Brianne volunteers, operated The Valley Sentinel young construction worker, a plumbing. While your husband, Your smarty-pants daughter, a refuge for countless women who from1985 to 1994. decent guy who has been to uni- Dave, was off taking seasonal Brianne, who left town when invariably go back to violent and ✫ she graduated from high school versity, who works in the lumber work for much of the year, you eke abusive households for the sake BRIAN FAWCETT, WHO LEFT HIS industry and you have two kids. out a living on 160 acres of rock in 1972, is held overnight in jail of their children. hometown of Prince George at You get to do all the traditional and pine and a triangle of sweet in Vancouver for participating More importantly, you learn age twenty-two, has recently maternal stuff that goes along loam that touches upon the Fraser. in some demonstration against about a Supreme Court decision written his own novel about cen- with being a mill wife in a mill Then your mean-spirited American missiles. So you visit made against a Canadian farm- tral B.C. with a similarly prosaic town in the early 50s in one of mother goes squirrelly with de- her for a few days. You accom- wife named Irene Murdoch in title, The Last of the Lumbermen those now abandoned logging mentia, and you get stuck with pany her to an eye-opening con- 1973 who tried to legally claim (Cormorant $21.95), examining towns out along CNR’s east line. that too. Your brother Garth is a ference at UBC called Women her fair share of the family ranch much of the same territory from You are deeply enmeshed in a busy logging contractor, living and Words, June 30-July 3. following a divorce. Listening to a male perspective. life of shared labour, brawls, well beyond his means. Your Peter Trower’s trilogy of dances that go on all night and sister Nancy, who married early, logging novels has also been then everyone decides to whip and often, now lives safely distant largely overlooked. The earliest, up pancakes. Nobody has much in Kamloops. classic B.C. logging novel that but there is enough to go around. When your cancer-ridden literary folks tend to acknowledge This all comes to a grinding mother dies in 1983 – after three is M.A. Grainger’s Woodsmen halt when the mill that everyone months in hospital – during which of the West (1908). Roderick relies on burns down one frosty you take the brunt of enduring the Haig-Brown wrote logging nov- night. Your country loving hus- dreary, pain-ridden, guilt-ridden els, Timber (1942) and On the band decides to gamble on an vigil typical for so many families, Highest Hill (1949). Arguably offer to take over your mother’s nobody deeply acknowledges the first B.C. graphic novel ever is farm, long neglected and falling your sacrifice because, after all, Bus Griffith’s unparalleled Now to ruin. Over your objections you by now, it is expected of you. You’re Logging (1978; 2013). Then the worst thing happens. move, you, your kids, your mill Brownlee 978-0-88982-294-8; house rolled on logs onto a lumber Even your wise and usually con- A panel from Bus Griffith’s Now You’re Logging Fawcett 978-1-77086-287-6

14 BC BOOKWORLD SUMMER 2014 FICTIONA to Z Brutal murder in London suspect. Soon violence threatens the protagonist, his Denied entrance to the afterlife, she must reconcile Janet Brons of Vancouver Island draws on her family and friends. The Killer Trail has been her three souls: her scholarly yang soul, her romantic background as a member of the Canadian foreign shortlisted for the Crime Writers’ Association Debut yin soul and her wise hun soul. 9781443423908 service, and later as a consultant for the Canadian Dagger Award. Originally from Newfoundland and government’s foreign affairs department, for her Labrador, D.B. (Derrick) Carew came to B.C. with his Bookselling bankrobber mystery debut, A Quiet Kill family in 1996. He is a social worker at a forensic Real life bank robber and author (Touchwood $14.95). Detective psychiatric hospital. 9781927063521 Stephen Reid has endorsed Chief Inspector Stephen Hay of Trevor Clark’s novel containing Scotland Yard, and RCMP Inspector Afterlife entrance fee an armed bank robbery and a Liz Forsyth, assisted by Sergeant The venerable UBC creative writing program will drive-by shooting, Hair-Trigger Gilles Ouellette, must work soon be getting an infusion of $75,000 from Penguin (Now or Never $17.95). It’s about together when a Canadian trade Random House; meanwhile the SFU Writers Studio a struggling bookstore manager commission officer in London is is the hotbed on the rise. Taiwanese-born Janie and bank robber in his forties, Janet Brons Trevor Clark brutally murdered. Hay and Chang is their latest SFU grad to make a major splash, Derrick Rowe, who bails out a Forsyth are faced with many suspects, and a second drawing on 36 generations of her families’ recorded friend, Jack Lofton, from jail. After Lofton’s bedding death raises the stakes. Press materials note “The genealogy for her debut novel Three Souls of a stripper proves highly problematic, Rowe enlists two investigators must overcome insecurities and (HarperCollins $19.99), inspired by her Lofton and a fellow bookstore employee for a bank suspicions as they find themselves wading into the grandmother. The main character is the ghost of heist that generates heat from both police and murky waters of the diplomatic community, and Leiyin who was captivated by a left-wing poet as a gangsters. Meanwhile Clark has had his latest story navigating through a melee of international teenager during Chinese civil strife in the 1930s. collection, Escape and Other Stories, from Vancouver- conspiracy, nationalism and murder.” 9781771510608 based Now or Never Publishing, recognized with a ReLit Prize nomination. The ReLit Prizes are for Stalin world literary works from presses outside the (mostly Never one to shy away from the truth in his fiction, Toronto-based) literary establishment. [Stephen Reid Grant Buday recalls Josef Stalin’s systematic recently won Victoria’s Butler Prize for his story starving of two million people in the Ukraine in collection, A Crowbar in the Buddhist Garden: the 1930s—known as the Holodomor—in his Writing From Prison.] 978-1-926942-62-9 novel about Cyril Andrachuk, a Canadian-born son of immigrant parents, set in Vancouver in Mystical breast milk 1962. In The Delusionist (Anvil $20), Cyril Set during the onset of the French struggles with menial labour jobs during the day Revolution, Lissa M. Cowan’s but draws incessantly and longs to attend art debut novel Milk Fever (Demeter school. His mother can’t imagine why Cyril wants $19.95) explores early feminist to draw his late-father’s tools—saws, drills, roots and the rise of explicit, hammers, wrenches—and questions his sanity forbidden literature. It’s a story when he begins a series of large, commemorative of love and the magical power of “Stalin stamps” amid growing family distress. For books to transform lives. “In Lissa M. Cowan anyone puzzled about the current headlines 1789, Armande, a wet nurse who involving Russia and Ukraine, this darkly comic is known for the mystical qualities of her breast novel is a potent reminder why few people can milk, goes missing. Céleste, a cunning servant girl ever escape from history, even at the western edge who Armande once saved from shame and of European migration. 978-1-927380-93-2 starvation, sets out to find her. A snuffbox found in the snow, the unexpected arrival of a gentleman and Killer mind games the discovery of the wet nurse’s diary, deepen the First-time novelist D.B. Carew has mystery. Using Armande’s diary as a map to her secret hit the ground running with a fast- past, Céleste fights to save her from those plotting paced psychological thriller, The to steal the wisdom of her milk.” Killer Trail (NeWest $14.95). It’s 978-192733520-8 about a Vancouver psychiatric continued on page 23

D.B. Carew social worker who is drawn into the mind games of a former patient, Grant Buday now a kidnap and murder

YOU’RE INVITED TO BEAUTIFUL NELSON IN THE KOOTENAYS INTERSECTIONS: Genre, Geography, Genius • Opening Social & Evening Reading • An Evening with Gail Bowen & Eleanor Wachtel • Youth Storytelling Workshop • Indigenous Publishing in Canada Panel • Stories About Storytellers • Mystery Writing Panel • Self-Publishing Presentation Eleanor Wachtel Douglas Gibson Angie Abdou Sid Marty hosts CBC Radio’s Writers is possibly Canada’s most is author of the novel was short-listed for a 2008 & Company, awarded the distinguished book editor, The Bone Cage, a finalist for Governor General’s Literary See website NY Festivals Award for the assisting Alice Munro, CBC’s Canada Reads contest Award and he won the for accommodation, Robertson Davies and World’s Best Radio and the 2012 MacEwan Grand Prize at the 2008 Banff tickets and other Programs. dozens of others. Book of the Year. Festival of Mountain Books. information. Also featuring... Kateri Akiwenzie-Damm • Gail Bowen • Deryn Collier • Garry Gottfriedson • Donna Morrissey • Mary Pinkoski • Craig Shemilt www.emlfestival.com The Elephant Mountain Literary Festival • July 10-13

15 BC BOOKWORLD SUMMER 2014 review FICTION

assumed majority ownership of the Chinese-run Celestial Hotel, ZACHARY erected by his Chinese business partner on the south side of the Johnson Street Ravine, “where the Jews and Americans were HIDES AGAIN building.” Zachary has drawn attention to Historical fi ction about early B.C. himself with a bi-racial marriage Stan Krumm’s to his partner’s daughter, Sue, receives a boost from and his gold reserves are running undercover fugitive thin. “I was approaching the age when a man is simply incapable Zachary’s Horses by Stan Krumm (Touchwood Editions $19.95) of learning how to make an honest living,” he confides to the reader. EW BRITISH COLUMBIANS CAN Jane Austen-like, Vanes- Intrigues include a possible tell you the first explorer sa Winn’s The Chief Factor’s scandal involving their child’s Fto have reached B.C. wa- Daughter (Touchwood, 2010) governess, Sarah Green, who had ters, for certain, was Juan Pérez recalls the daughter-laden family a different name when she was in 1774. Almost no one can tell of Hudson Bay Company Chief living in Olympia, Washington, you the first B.C. premier was Factor John Work in Fort Vic- and a much-ballyhooed horse John McCreight. The relative toria around 1858. race involving skullduggery and ignorance of our past explains Donald Hauka’s McGowan’s unsavoury characters, including why we have had so few histori- War (New Star, 2003) was a fine the nefarious Mr. Roselle who cal novels about life in B.C. prior attempt to document greed and recognizes Zachary from Barker- to 1900… corruption in 1859 when the Brit- ville and tries to blackmail him. Back in 1971, Ian Mahood ish Crown could barely control “I was haunted by visions of of Nanoose Bay self-published 30,000 politically divided Ameri- Roselle, and visions of myself a fictional life and times of Nuu- can miners camped the length of and my family running from chah-nuth Chief Maquinna and the Fraser River. angry crowds, creeping fearfully the arrival of Captain Cook, The Lee Henderson’s The Man across the wilderness,” Zachary Land of Maquinna, circa 1778. Game (Penguin, 2008) melded confides. George Bowering’s Burning historical characters with fic- Although Zachary’s Horses Water (General, 1980) offers tional, feuding and fighting log- involves crime and deception, a fanciful depiction of Captain gers in the aftermath of the Great Stan Krumm grew up about fi fty miles from Barkerville. it’s not a page-turner; rather it’s George Vancouver feuding with Vancouver Fire of 1886. Krumm’s highly credible depic- his insubordinate botanist Ar- By comparison, the literary of two novels published twenty tor, ‘Rosh,’ a fellow outsider, to tion of manners and customs chibald Menzies, circa 1792. process of integrating First Na- years apart, Zachary’s Gold survive. Instead of being the hero from the protagonist’s retracted A blend of fact and fiction, tions characters and culture into (Oolichan, 1994) and now Zach- who triumphs against adversity in personality that proves alluring. Maureen Duffas’ A Most Un- West Coast fiction has a long ary’s Horses. the end, Zachary remains a cold “The thought occurred to me usual Colony: Vancouver Island history, starting with B.A. McK- “I want people to enjoy the and frightened victim of circum- that no one had extended an invi- (Sandhill, 1996) is the story of elvie’s melodramatic Huldowget: fact that we have a wonderful stance, unable to clear his name. tation to me that would include the colony of Vancouver Island A Story of the North Pacific Coast history that’s full of fantastic Above the 49th parallel, in my wife… It was disagreeable as told by fictional Kate Murray (Dent, 1926) and A.M. Stephen’s stories in British Columbia,” says Krumm’s fiction, the outlaw is and illogical. James Douglas and the fictional letters of Mary The Kingdom of the Sun (Dent, Krumm, “We don’t have to go to not glorified or mythologized like had, up until very recently, been Yates. It covers a period from the 1927)—an historical romance the American Old West to find train robber Bill Miner who was governor of this colony, while first Scots immigrant in 1849 to about a gentleman adventurer entertainment.” mythologized as a “gentleman married to a woman who was the demolition of Fort Victoria’s named Richard Anson who sailed In the first novel, Zachary bandit” in the movie The Grey half Cree Indian, but a man with a buildings in 1860. aboard Sir Francis Drake’s Beddoes, an ex-Pinkerton agent Fox. Zachary is a tight-lipped Chinese wife was still expected to David Corcoran’s The West- Golden Hind, only to be cast away from the U.S., arrives in Barker- drinker and gambler, prone to leave her at home. Good enough. Coasters (Macmillan, 1986) is a and live with the Haida. ville in the 1860s, seeking his shrewd philosophy, who receives Sue would not have wanted to be Michener-styled saga that begins ✫ fortune. He is stymied until he no sympathy whatsoever as a fu- here, where her beauty and grace in 1857, published to coincide SO STAN KRUMM DOESN’T HAVE A kills a man in self-defence. Dead gitive from frontier justice by the would have embarrassed these with Vancouver’s Centennial, lot of competition. Ned’s cache of stolen gold sud- end of Zachary’s Gold. colonial crones.” duplicated somewhat by David To popularize pre-Confedera- denly makes Zachary a rich man In the new novel, Zachary’s Anyone who reads either of Cruise and Alison Griffiths’ tion-based B.C. fiction, Quesnel- but also a desperado before he is Horses, at age 34, our ex-lawman these novels will wish it won’t 750-page, generational novel based Krumm has invented a able to explain what happened. and narrator resurfaces in Victoria take Krumm another twenty years called Vancouver (HarperCol- character, Zachary Beddoes, Wounded, Zachary needs in 1870. Using a less-than-clever to deliver a third installment. lins, 2003). whose name appears in the titles help from a Chinese prospec- alias, Lincoln Zachary, he has Zachary’s Horses 978-1-771510-042-4

After nearly 400 years an emerald-encrusted gold B BDI=:GIDC

16 BC BOOKWORLD SUMMER 2014 Red Tuque Books Book Distributor For The Small Canadian Press - Ensuring Canadian Readers Literary Diversity

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17 BC BOOKWORLD SUMMER 2014 review FICTION BY JULIAN ROSS Here’s Jiggs Dubois, the slea- Swede’s Ferry by Allan Safarik zy Pinkerton agent, sizing up the (Coteau Books $19.95) A STORY FOR horse trader Bud Quigley: “Du- bois stroked his chin whiskers and OME STORIES TAKE his shark eyes seemed to glow, years of planning staring into Bud’s face as if he was trying to empty the old man’s Sand research. Oth- DOLORES brain of its content.” ers rise to the surface, It’s all a far cry from Blackfish Allan Safarik magazine which Safarik and Brian unbidden, like a geyser. ’s rogue western has Brett founded in the 1970s, a thoroughly West Coast mag that Allan Safarik never antici- bawdy humour, guns pated Swede’s Ferry. But so evolved into Blackfish Press. much of life that matters, love and and a bank heist Based in White Rock, they pub- death, is unexpected. gone wrong. lished beautiful, limited-edition Having shifted his life from the books and trade paperbacks in a list West Coast to Saskatchewan, Al- that included poets Pat Lowther, lan Safarik co-wrote a book about Al Purdy, and Jim Green. his father’s sixty years in the Safarik’s place in B.C. litera- fishing industry, Bluebacks and ture is assured. Now he has made Silver Brights (ECW 2012). After his mark on the prairies, following seventeen books of poetry and in the not-always-wild west fic- non-fiction since 1975, he never tion path of Guy Vanderhaege. imagined he would suddenly write It’s a double life: Safarik’s next a “rogue western” with enough Specifically, she asked for a the Louis Riel Trail in Dundurn. double as undercover detectives. novel will be set in gritty 1950s bawdy humour, .44 calibre Colts, story about the prairies. Safarik poured his heart into the Well-drawn characters include Vancouver, inside the corrupt po- Appaloosas and pots of cowboy “He came into the country on new work, sometimes working 12 historical figures like financial lice department headed by Walter coffee to make you want to saddle a stolen horse,” he replied. to 15 hours a day, enjoying the mogul James J. Hill, founder of Mulligan. He’s also contemplat- up and go for a ride. “That’s a good start,” she said. rollicking ride. the Great Northern Railway, and ing a sequel to Swede’s Ferry. Set in 1894, in the porous bor- “Now go and write me a first “It was such a joyful experi- William Pinkerton of the notori- Dolores Reimer died of cancer derlands between Manitoba and chapter.” ence writing this book,” he said. ous Pinkerton Detective Agency. in April of 2013; Swede’s Ferry North Dakota, Swede’s Ferry is As a boy growing up in Burn- While the writing has the These are mixed with memorable was published in October of 2014. a cracker of a first novel about a aby, Safarik had devoured pulp freshness of a tall tale, Safarik also creations like the horse traders 9781550505610 bank heist gone wrong—all thanks westerns and recently he had ed- focuses his poet’s eye on quirky Bud Quigley, Alphonse Pointed Julian Ross founded to four words from Safarik’s ail- ited collections of western stories. details in his fictional world of Stick, and Les Simpson, the con- Polestar Press and ing wife, poet and editor Dolores It also didn’t hurt that he and Re- travelling preachers who are actu- flicted protagonist who is forced Bluefield Books. He works at Reimer: “Tell me a story.” imer lived in an historic house on ally conmen, and prostitutes who to lead a double life. Polestar Calendars in Winlaw.

18 BC BOOKWORLD SUMMER 2014 21st GEORGE WOODCOCK LIFETIME ACHIEVEMENT AWARD JEAN BARMAN Since her arrival in B.C. in 1971, Jean Barman has written the standard, modern history of the province, The West Beyond The West: A History of British Columbia (UTP 1991), and twenty other books, including her forthcoming French Canadians, Furs, and Indigenous Women in the Making of the Pacific Northwest (UBC Press 2014). Jean Barman was inducted as a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada in 2002 in recognition for her prolific work in Canadian history, particularly in the history of the West. For additional info, visit abcbookworld.com

Since 1995, BC BookWorld and the Vancouver Public Library have sponsored the Woodcock PHOTO Award and the Writers Walk at 350 West Georgia St. in Vancou-

ver. This $5000 award is also SAWCHUK sponsored by Writers Trust of

Jean Barman Canada and Yosef Wosk. LAURA

RYGA AWARD FOR SOCIAL AWARENESS IN LITERATURE BEV SELLARS Bev Sellars is the 2014 recipient of the George Ryga Award for Social Awareness in Literature for her powerful memoir They Called Me Number One: Secrets and Survival at an Indian Residential School (Talonbooks). Other finalists were Adrienne Fitzpatrick’s The Earth Remembers Everything (Caitlin) and Gillian Wigmore’s Dirt of Ages (Nightwood Editions). INFO: bcbookawards.ca Bev Sellars Since 2004, BC BookWorld has co-sponsored this award with Okanagan College (Norah Bowman-Broz, coordinator).

for Outstanding Scholarly THE BASIL STUART-STUBBS PRIZE Book on British Columbia DAVID STOUCK David Stouck’s Arthur Erickson: An Architect’s Life (Douglas & McIntyre) reveals a man of international reputation who was touted as “Canada’s national treasure as a designer” but who, at the height of his career, went bankrupt. The award ceremony is hosted by UBC Library.

David INFO: about.library.ubc.ca/awards/basil-stuart-stubbs-prize Stouck BC BookWorld co-sponsors this new award with UBC Library (Ingrid Parent, chief librarian). GRAY CAMPBELL DISTINGUISHED SERVICE AWARD

BOOK & ART The Association of Book Publishers of BC LITTLE SISTER’S EMPORIUM is grateful for the sponsorship of Friesen Printers, The Gray Campbell Distinguished Service Award is presented annually for a signifi- International Web Express, Rhino Print Solutions cant contribution to the book publishing industry in B.C. In 2014, the award went to and BC BookWorld. Jim Deva and Janine Fuller whose Little Sister’s Book & Art Emporium fought sigificant battles versus Canada Customs and prevailed in a Supreme Count decision Janine Fuller and Jim Deva in 2000 to safeguard freedom of expression and equality rights for literary materials. JIM DOUGLAS PUBLISHER OF THE YEAR AWARD

The Association of Book Publishers of BC RONSDALE PRESS is grateful for the sponsorship of Friesen Printers, Ron The Jim Douglas Publisher of the Year Award is presented annually to a International Web Express, Hatch Rhino Print Solutions BC book publishing company that has earned the respect of the province’s and BC BookWorld. community of publishers. It is named after Jim Douglas, founder of J. J. PHOTO

Douglas Publishers, and was presented in April, 2014, by the Association

TWIGG of Book Publishers of B.C. to Ron Hatch and his Ronsdale Press. ALL PRIZES SUPPORTED BY PACIFIC BOOKWORLD NEWS SOCIETY BC INFO ON THESE & OTHER PRIZES: 604-736-4011 • BCBOOKAWARDS.CA BOOKWORLD

19 BC BOOKWORLD SUMMER 2014 CONGRATULATIONS BC BOOK PRIZES TO KATHRYN PARA

Finalist for the Ethel Wilson Fiction Prize! Lucky – “Astonishing in scope and depth” -VAN SUN “Complex and compelling…gripping from beginning to end” -LRC PHOTO

MILLER

WINNER of the MONICA GREAT BC Novel Contest Julie Morstad, Christie Harris Illustrated Prize winner B BDI=:GIDC

SIMPLY READ BOOKS congratulates our BC BOOK PRIZE authors:

Julie Morstad Julie Flett Théodora Armstrong, û winnerü û finalistü Wilson Fiction Prize nominee of the Christie Harris Illustrated for the Christie Harris Illustrated Children’s Literature Prize for: Children’s Literature Prize for:

Double winners: PHOTO

Ashley Little and PHOTO

MILLER David Stouck TWIGG MONICA && 1 The 30th annual gala marked the first time two authors took After 2012 Lieutenant Governor’s Award winner Brian Brett home two prizes each. publicly criticized the paucity of female recipients for the annual Lieutenant Governor’s Award for Literary Excellence since 2004, 2 It marked the first time one author won two prizes for two different books. this year Kit Pearson received the $5,000 honour. It was split last year between and . Lieutenant Best of all, it was the first time all seven prizes went to books Sarah Ellis Lorna Crozier 3 Governor of British Columbia, Honourable Judith Guichon, How To Wild Berries published by B.C. publishers. isbn 978-1-897476-57-4 $18.95 Can isbn 978-1-897476-89-5 $18.95 Can was in attendance for the second time. If Brett and others are keep- It was the first time police cordoned off the venue for two www.simplyreadbooks.com 4 th ing score, that’s nine men and four women. blocks in all directions (for 5,000 runners to participate in the Last year’s emcee, Grant Lawrence, made the best and worst Vancouver Marathon on the following morning). joke of the evening as a co-recipient of the Bill Duthie Booksellers’ 5 It was the first time perennially dominant Harbour Publishing Choice Award for The Lonely End of the Rink: Confessions of a and Douglas & McIntyre had one publisher, Howard White, Reluctant Goalie (Douglas & McIntyre). Having won this same prize who hosted the after-party for Harbour’s 40th anniversary. for his first book in 2012, with Harbour Publishing, the smooth- 30 talking rock ‘n’ roller turned CBC broadcaster Lawrence opted to shley Little won the Ethel Wilson Fic- sign a contract with Harbour’s main rival, Douglas & McIntyre. ANNIVERSARY After D&M went horrendously tion Prize for Anatomy of a Girl belly-up and the firm’s inventory Gang (Arsenal Pulp Press) and the Shelia and imprint was bought by Harbour, BRITISH COLUMBIA HISTORICAL FEDERATION Lawrence found himself back where AA. Egoff Children’s Prize for her young adult novel, Winner of Lieutenant Governor’s Medal for Historical Writing: HAS 5 FIRSTS he started from, with Howard Ralph Drew Forest & Fjord, the History of Belcarra. The New Normal (Orca Book Publishers). In thirty White. No other author has won the Other prize winners: years, nobody else has ever had this ‘double-double,’ Booksellers’ Choice Award twice, Michael Layland The Land of Heart’s Delight: Early Maps and Charts of Vancouver Island with only two books—with two im- Peter Johnson for Quarantined: Life and Death at William Head Station, 1872-1959 Billeh PHOTO

winning with two different titles in the same year. eye and the inward eye. And that is one of the mysteries that make Nickerson prints—and the same publisher. Honourable mentions: Tofino-raised Little acknowledged David Chariandy for en- literature.’” and Adding a welcome dose of can- MILLER Ruth Derksen Siemens Daughters in the City: Mennonite Maids in Vancouver 1931-61 couraging her to write Anatomy of a Girl Gang and Lynn Coady Dorothy Livesay Poetry Prize presenter Billeh Nickerson Jordan dour after some less than inspired Sean Kheraj Inventing Stanley Park: An Environmental History Abel for encouraging her to turn a short story into a novel for The New glided each nominee’s book through the air as his cell phone played MONICA speeches, Howard White told the Daphne Sleigh The Artist In The Cloister: The Life and Works of Father Dunstan Massey Normal. the original TV theme to Star Trek before he announced the winner audience about Lawrence’s career-building. Unfazed, Lawrence re- For information on BCHF awards visit www.bchistory.ca David Stouck won the Roderick Haig-Brown Regional Prize was first-time, First Nations author Jordan Abel for his criti- ferred to his winning book in reference to two recent hockey books and the Hubert Evans Non-Fiction Prize for his biography, Arthur cal investigation of the legacy of early-twentieth-century ethnog- by Bobby Orr and Prime Minister Stephen Harper. He said Erickson: An Architect’s Life (Douglas & McIntyre). This book was rapher, Marius Barbeau, for The Place of Scraps (Talonbooks). they were a team of sorts. He was the goalie. Orr was the defenceman. also shortlisted for the Charles Taylor Prize and has also won the Small press publisher Dimiter Savoff once again saw the Harper was the right winger. Basil Stuart-Stubbs Prize for Outstanding Scholarly Book on B.C high quality of his children’s list recognized when Julie Morstad After thirty years of prize-giving, some analysis might be in (presented June 9 at UBC Library). took home the Christie Harris Illustrated Children’s Literature Prize order. The Duthie Booksellers Choice Award has been won by titles Stouck thanked Ethel Wilson’s niece, Mary Buckerfield for How To (Simply Read Books), her second win in this category from either the Douglas & McIntyre/Greystone imprint or the Har- White, for suggesting he should write the biography of her friend, for a Simply Read title. Savoff’s imprint has had the winning entry bour Publishing imprint 22 times out of 30. Erickson, editor Barbara Pulling for reducing the original manu- in this category for three of the past four years. In terms of individual publishers since 1985, here are the cumu- script by 40,000 words, and his wife. lative totals for B.C. Book Prizes won: Howard White “The biography was published because of two 27, Scott McIntyre (D&M) 26, Patsy Aldana venerable figures in this province’s publishing in- (Groundwood) 13; Rob Sanders (Greystone) 9. dustry,” he said. “Scott McIntyre responded If one includes the Roderick Haig-Brown Prize for enthusiastically to the manuscript when I submit- best book about B.C.— always won by a B.C. pub- ted it in 2011 and, after Douglas and McIntyre lished title — and if one excludes the Bill Duthie Book- closed, Howard White in 2013 made it possible sellers Choice Award — which must be published by a that the book go forward. I thank them both. I would B.C. publishing house — the breakdown since 1985 also like to pay tribute to Roderick Haig- for winners published from B.C. versus winners not Brown for whom this prize is named, by quoting published from B.C. is almost fifty-fifty. To be exact,

something that Ethel Wilson wrote. ‘A man writes PHOTOS it’s 80-79.

about a river,’ she says, but ‘Roderick Haig-Brown The winning fiction title has been published from MILLER writes about a river that never sleeps. That is to Graeme Truelove (centre), author of within B.C. only one-sixth of the time. Women win Svend Robinson, with his wife Janine Bell, Dapper host

say, there is truth and there is creation; the outward and New Star publisher Rolf Maurer MONICA Charles Demers the Ethel Wilson Fiction Prize two-thirds of the time.

20 BC BOOKWORLD • LOOKOUT • SUMMER • 2014 21 BC BOOKWORLD • LOOKOUT • SUMMER • 2014 SEE FINALIST BOOKS, TOUR PHOTOS AND th Read the winners of the 30 annual BC Book Prizes MORE AT WWW.BCBOOKPRIZES.CA

HUBERT EVANS NON-FICTION PRIZE CHRISTIE HARRIS ILLUSTRATED CHILDREN’S and LITERATURE PRIZE RODERICK HAIG-BROWN REGIONAL PRIZE Julie Morstad Win Th e Winners Contest David Stouck How To Enter to win a collection of all six Arthur Erickson: An Architect’s Simply Read Books winning titles. See participating stores Life www. Douglas & McIntyre SHEILA A. EGOFF CHILDREN’S LITERATURE PRIZE and contest details online at Ashley Little bcbookprizes.ca. Contest runs from ETHEL WILSON FICTION PRIZE Th e New Normal Katherine Farris photo by May 19–June 16, 2014. Ashley Little Orca Book Publishers Anatomy of a Girl Gang Kit Pearson recipient of the 2014 Arsenal Pulp Press BILL DUTHIE BOOKSELLERS’ CHOICE AWARD LIEUTENANT GOVERNOR’S AWARD DOROTHY LIVESAY POETRY PRIZE Grant Lawrence FOR LITERARY EXCELLENCE Jordan Abel Th e Lonely End of the Rink: Established in 2003 by the Honourable Iona Campagnolo Th e Place of Scraps Confessions of a Reluctant Goalie to recognize British Columbia writers who have contributed Talonbooks Douglas & McIntyre to the development of literary excellence in the province.

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Finalists, Roderick Haig-Brown Regional Prize Svend Robinson Voyage Through A Life in Politics the Past Century Graeme Truelove Rolf Knight

“A tour de force. The content is gripping, Written with the verve and passion Svend is a phenomenon, the anecdotes leap of a working-class activist, this is Rolf from the page and the writing is Knight’s clear-eyed account of his exceptional. The text abounds with political extraordinary life: from the resource and personal revelations. As a slice of left work-camps of the northern BC coast, versus right in Canadiana, you could to the halls of Canadian academia, to anthropological fieldwork in northern not do better.” Quebec and trips to New York, Berlin, —Stephen Lewis, former UN Special Nigeria, and Colombia. Envoy for HIV/AIDS in Africa New Star Books Congratulations to all the BC Book Prizes winners & nominees! newstarbooks.com | [email protected]

GABRIOLA ISLAND AUTHORS

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22 BC BOOKWORLD SUMMER 2014 FICTIONA to Z anthropologist, Émond has written and directed six Kayaking thriller feature films since 2000, several of which have been Born in Örnsköldsvik, Sweden in 1941, Ulla selected for Cannes and other festivals. The film and Hakanson of Nanoose Bay came to British book recount how the life of an alcoholic, former Columbia in 1996. She is already planning a sequel crime reporter named Gérard is mysteriously spared to her first thriller that was inspired by a kayaking because he delays his return to his apartment one trip, The Price of Silence (BroadPen $15), about night by stopping to tie his shoelace, thereby avoiding a woman who is stalked by her criminal husband. a tragic fire that consumes his apartment building, He’s on the run from drug gangs and desperately resulting in the death of six neighbours and the wants to get his hands on the cash that the heroine Jim Couper inexplicable disappearance of others. Why was his Amy has saved for her expanding and friend life spared? Born in Montreal in 1951, Gilmore hair-salon business. She is knows the city intimately, having written Zombies in the Okanagan captured by the criminals Swinging in Paradise: The Story of Jazz in Montreal chasing her husband. 978-1481063210 Peaceful little Peachland in the Okanagan might strike (also available in French as Une histoire du jazz à most people as an unlikely locale for undead havoc, Montréal) and Who’s Who of Jazz Missing women but local resident and travel writer Jim Couper has in Montreal: Ragtime to 1970. First Nations leaders have imagined otherwise in his first horror novel, Zombie 9781550718461 suggested that as many as fifty Angst (Severed Press $14.75). A bundle of rags Ulla Hakanson women have gone missing or been washes ashore. On wobbly legs it rises and wakes to Harold Lloyd fix murdered on the 500-mile stretch of highway a second life. Death by drowning has preserved some Margaret Gunning’s third novel, connecting Prince Rupert and Prince George between brain function: it slurs a few words, then heads home The Glass Character (Thistle- 1969 and 2011, but the official number of missing to wife and kids. The reunion goes sour as the zombie down $19.95), revisits the silent women is eighteen. Regardless of the numbers, the eats his wife’s new boyfriend. Electromagnetic waves Margaret Gunning film era of the 1920s through the social trauma of the missing women from the wake other dead, who slouch to a trailer park for a eyes of a sixteen-year-old girl, Jane, who is sexually Highway of Tears is reflected in Adrianne Harun’s meal. Police chief Jane Dougherty and her partner fixated on the much-adored but diffident comedian debut novel, A Man Came Out of a Door (Penguin are called upon to investigate the town’s first Harold Lloyd. Although lesser-known today than $17). Harun’s first book, The King of Limbo, was homicides in a century. Was it a drug deal gone bad? Buster Keaton or Charlie Chaplin, the talented a Washington State Book Award finalist, and her A motorcycle gang vendetta? Mafia revenge? Lloyd had as many female admirers as the likes of second collection of fiction, Lost in the War of the Meanwhile, barkeeping vampires feel compelled to Douglas Fairbanks Jr. or Rudolph Valentino. Jane’s Beautiful Lads, was a Grace Paley Award finalist. create a blood bank with their drunken customers as naive obsession with her screen hero is Harun teaches at the Rainier Writing Workshops donors. School kids get taken hostage. The ensuing 978-1-927068-88-5 sympathetically portrayed. at Pacific Lutheran University. 9780670786107 battle sets RCMP versus zombies versus army versus vampires versus posse. The locale of Experimental noir Couper’s publisher is equally Michael Hetherington’s third unexpected: Tasmania. 9781925047257 fiction release, The Playing Card Feminist modern (Passfield $19.95), is described as a suspenseful experimental novel Her eyes have been described as in which a deck of playing cards is unflinching. Her “gothic, peculiar, discovered, each card inscribed domestic and strange” stories M. Hetherington with a fragment of a story. The have been lauded as elegant and Cynthia Flood character of S has kept one playing card face down crystal sharp. Cynthia Flood’s for 26 years without looking at it. Playing Card is fourth collection of short stories, Red Girl Rat Boy PHOTO

being followed by the almost-as-strange-sounding (Biblioasis $18.95) once more focuses on the lives Halving the Orange (Passfield $19.95), a tale of a WESTER of women with a feminist clarity that is modern, young woman named Isabella Allenbeigh who has shrewd and sophisticated. 978-1-927428-41-2 CRAIG been confined within the walls of a Vancouver college The coroner and the killer that her medievalist father founded, in keeping with an agreement made with After eight novels, Nicola Furlong has re-released him at age nine. Orange 978-0-9879618-0-8; her first mystery Teed Off! (Dark Oak $15.95) in Card 978-0-9879618-5-3; which a chocoholic golf club pro discovers that not all bad lies are on the golf course... Coroner Riley Stalked in Alabama Quinn is forced to unravel her own past when she Twice winner of the Surrey investigates the suspicious death of her boss and International Writer’s Conference brother-in-law in order to catch a cunning killer. Storyteller’s Award, Michael The protagonist finds herself “sandwedged” by a Hiebert has been published in villainous environmental group, a mysterious The Best American Mystery Series, Japanese consortium and her estranged sister. edited by Joyce Carol Oates. In There are no penalty strokes for golf puns. his second novel, In Close to the 978-1610091091 Alcoholic crime reporter Broken Hearted (Kensington $16.95), a killer’s release from Jazz aficionado John prison prompts revelations in an Gilmore of Victoria Alabama town. As the only has provided the detective in Alvin, Alabama, Leah English translation Teal, mother of for 8:17 pm, rue two, investigates the Darling (Guernica fears of a young $20), a first novel by mother who believes Quebec film-maker she is being stalked by Bernard Émond the released murderer that served as the basis Adrianne Harun recalls missing named Preacher Eli. of Émond’s second women Film poster for 8:17 pm, 978-0-7582-9426-3 rue Darling feature film. Trained as an continued on page 25 Michael Hiebert

23 BC BOOKWORLD SUMMER 2014 “I could eat there every day.” foreword by Sarah Vancouver Sun McLachlan More than 100 of the restaurant’s all- time favourite recipes– recipes that have fed surfers, hungry locals, curious visitors and die-hard foodies alike.

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24 BC BOOKWORLD SUMMER 2014 FICTIONA to Z Reconciling the past Harry Karlinsky, a Winnipeg-born professor of Thomas Wolfe famously wrote You Can’t Go Home psychiatry at UBC, has published an equally Again, but professor Sidonie Von Taler makes the audacious novel, The Stonehenge Letters (Coach attempt in After Alice (NeWest $19.95) a first novel House $17.95) about, among other things, why the by Karen Hofmann. After a world’s most renowned psychiatrist, Sigmund career in Montreal, the character Freud, never received the Nobel Prize even though retires to her Okanagan he was nominated 33 times. Weaving fact and fiction, hometown, still in the shadow of Karlinsky also describes a secret competition created her late sister Alice. There is by Alfred Nobel to solve the mystery of Stonehenge. unfinished business. Sidonie must 9781552452943 both reconcile the past and try to Shanghai, Nazis and resistance re-connect with people she left Aislinn Hunter Vancouver physician Daniel Kalla continues his Karen Hofmann trilogy about German Jews in Shanghai with his eighth behind. Hofmann, who was raised through a microscope. As part of an intelligence novel Rising Sun, Falling Shadow (HarperCollins in the Okanagan Valley, teaches English and creative system that spies on the enemy from the sky from a $24.99) with the story of Dr. Franz and Soon Yi writing at Thompson Rivers University in Kamloops. converted mansion in England, she is also on the 9781927063460 (Sunny) Adler through 1943, the lookout for love. Located north of London, the bleakest year of the war in Lost child and a Victorian asylum mansion was requisitioned by the Royal Air Force Shanghai, when Allied citizens Due in the fall, Aislinn Hunter’s second novel is and renamed RAF Medmenham. Nowadays it’s a were interned and tens of disturbing even when condensed into one paragraph. luxury hotel called Danesfield House. 9781459721432 When she was fifteen, Jane Standen, the protagonist thousands of German Jews were of The World Between Us (Doubleday $29.95) lost Shane rides again crammed into a ghetto already teeming with impoverished locals. track of a five-year-old girl she was looking after Long after Jack Schaefer’s 1949 The Adlers risk their lives to during a walk in the woods. The child has never been Western novel Shane was made Daniel Kalla support the cause of the Chinese found. As an adult, working in the archives of a cash- into a famous 1953 movie starring Resistance while staring down a threat from local strapped London museum, she is researching the Alan Ladd and Jean Arthur, and Nazis. The story delves into both heroism and the mysterious disappearance of a woman who went the boy Joey was heard shouting, missing from a Victorian asylum in the north of treachery that can result when ordinary people find Sean Johnston “Shane! Come back!” as the themselves facing extraordinary dangers. 9781443404686 England 125 years ago. The two losses converge in a wounded man rides away from dilapidated country house. 9780385680646 Cemetery Hill, Shane has come back—sort of. Vancouver’s underbelly Sean Johnston has picked up the story and In the debut crime novel by West Vancouver’s Shuswap murder imagined its continuance through the life of a Dietrich Kalteis, Ride the Lightning (ECW $24.95), Having worked for thirty years as young boy named Billy on a North Dakota ranch a disbarred Seattle bounty hunter named Karl Morgen a social worker and supervisor with his lonely mother and wheelchair-ridden comes to Vancouver to work as a process server. with Aboriginal communities, and father in Listen All You Bullets (Gaspereau Impressed by a city in which “people settle things resided in the Cariboo for twenty $27.95). We meet a traveling bookseller one with middle fingers instead of guns,” Morgen years, Steven Hunter of Big Lake year after the gunslinger’s disappearance, and nonetheless finds himself immersed in the city’s Steven Hunter Ranch has self-published his first a Métis girl from Saskatchewan. 9781554471294 novel The Cameron Ridge underbelly when he crosses paths with the scumbag Conspiracy ($17) about a young Shuswap Stonehenge, Freud and Nobel from Seattle who had his license revoked, Miro Knotts, a dope dealer. 978-1-77041-150-0 (Secwepemc) girl who witnesses the murder of After his first novel The Evolution of Inanimate her brother and sister at the hands of three miners Objects: The Life and Collected Works of Thomas 1984 Vancouver in 1859 during the Cariboo Gold Rush. He Darwin (1857-1879) was republished in hardcover Nancy Lee’s highly-charged debut novel The Age acknowledges the assistance of the Secwepemc (2012) and paperback (2013) by HarperCollins UK, Museum in Kamloops. 978-0-9917071-0-2 (M&S $22.95) is about a troubled teenaged girl, Gerry, who takes refuge in a gang of misfits in Climate fiction response to an absent father and a mother who is Coquitlam-based Moon Willow Press has released a distracted by a new relationship. As Gerry becomes novel, Back to the Garden ($15.95), by Clara Hume embroiled in the gang’s plot to violently disrupt a (a pen name), that is part of a new genre dubbed Cli- peace march, she becomes enthralled with the Fi by Wired magazine. Climate fiction is described group’s leader. Increasingly divided by her as “dystopian fiction set in the near future, in which fantasizing and reality, Gerry’s need to be loved climate change wreaks havoc on an otherwise leads her towards tragedy. The Age is “set amidst familiar planet, cli-fi has attracted literary authors nuclear tension in 1984 Vancouver.” 978-0-7710-5252-1 like Ian McEwan and Barbara Kingsolver.” In the near future, on a warmer, ecologically degraded Earth, Recovering a marriage post-apocalypse survivors leave their mountain Narrated by a former realtor, Donna Milner’s highly refuge in Idaho to traverse much of the U.S. in credible Somewhere In-Between (Caitlin $21.95) order to find family in Georgia and South follows the efforts of a couple to purchase an idyllic Carolina. Back to the Garden is told as a but remote ranch in the Chilcotin. We gradually series of first person narratives by learn they are attempting to recover their different characters. 978-0-9877813-1-4 marriage after a tragic family loss. Julie O’Dale tries to support her husband Ian’s dream to War, spying and love escape from the big city in favour of a team of Elinor Florence of Invermere is slated to draft horses, four cow ponies, and range cattle. publish her first novel in October. Set during Trouble is, their six-hundred-acre ranch the Second World War, Bird’s Eye View includes one very problematic, long-time (Dundurn $24.99) will follow an tenant, Virgil Blue, who doggedly occupies an idealistic young Canadian old trapper’s cabin. This novel was woman, Rose Jolliffe, as she slated to be published by McArthur joins the air force and becomes & Co. before that Ontario firm went an aerial photographic Nancy Lee belly-up. 978-1-927575-38-3 interpreter who views the war continued on page 27

25 BC BOOKWORLD SUMMER 2014 26 BC BOOKWORLD SUMMER 2014 FICTIONA to Z West Coast mystery Dickerson in the wake of the 2008 U.S. stock market Message in a bottle As a Summerland business owner and freelance crisis. Even though many people would have liked Ruth Ozeki, who divides her time between Cortes magazine writer who has sailed for years in the Inside to see this philanderer off the planet, police arrest a Island, B.C. and New York City, was one of six authors Passage, R.J. McMillen has First Nations man, Ryan Ghostkeeper, who is found shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize for her novel, A created a new B.C. mystery with the murder weapon, a knife. A hung jury prompts Tale for the Time Being (Viking Canada), about the detective, Dan Connor, a former Vancouver Police Sergeant Sandra Wolychenski to relationship between two people who never meet, cop who explores the mid-West reevaluate the case and investigate Slim Jimmy, a but who are connected by the Coast by boat. In the debut novel, member of an anti-development group called The proverbial message in a bottle. Dark Moon Walking Resistance, a cadre of hard-core bicyclists. Two One is a middle-aged writer in (TouchWood $14.95), Connor wheels good; four wheels bad. Desolation Sound, B.C. who is

R.J. McMillen works alongside a First Nations Nowlin’s background in law struggling to write a memoir just man he once busted in order to permeates the story. 9780987726841 as she discovers the secret diary track down a missing biologist—while encountering of a 16-year-old Tokyo girl, Nao, a wide range of eccentric coastal characters. A sequel Irish rebellion Ruth Ozeki which is washed ashore after the will be published next spring. 9781771510660 Only seven years of the life of Irish 2011 tsunami. 978-0670067046 highwayman Redmond O’Hanlon

Literary gothic romp Ron Duffy are documented: from 1674, when A woman of mystery Peter Norman’s first novel, he was proclaimed an outlaw, to Andrew Parkin‘s 24th book, Private Dancers or Emberton (Douglas & McIntyre 1681, when he died. According to Ron Duffy, “This Responsible Women, a Novel of Intrigue (Strategic $19.95), takes its title from a gives the novelist free rein to indulge his Book Publishing $21.95) is a rare B.C. novel for two fictional dictionary publisher, imagination.” In his novel Ó’Hanlon (CreateSpace reasons: it unabashedly includes sex and it shows Emberton Publishing, and $21.91), Duffy has created a figure, who, at twenty, that, hey, things can turn out well. Laced with food,

Peter Norman manages to combine lexicography is swept up in the Irish Rebellion of 1641. “The aim drink, sex, costumes, and exotic and etymology—along with an of the Rebellion is to win religious freedom and interiors, it’s a tale of eros and illiterate protagonist named Lance Blunt and a the return of lands confiscated from traditional espionage as a journalist named malevolent entity that is bent on draining the chieftains, including the O’Hanlons. They go down Paul Wills tries to track down a world of human language. It adds up to a comic, to defeat by the disciplined forces of Oliver mystery woman he encountered literary, Gothic romp. 978-1-55365-554-1 Cromwell. O’Hanlon flees to France and serves in Hong Kong, Paris and London, with distinction in both the French and Spanish the beautiful Kalitza. Private

Murdering the Condo King armies at war in Flanders. O’Hanlon returns to Andrew Parkin Dancers involves counter- Having taught himself to paint while teaching law in Ireland. Expecting no restitution of his family’s terrorism and identity puzzles. Newcastle-under-Lyme, England, lawyer Christopher lands under the restored Charles II, O’Hanlon takes Parkin describes his magnetic and alluring character Nowlin now lists his painterly influences as to the hills and woods of southern Ulster, the leader of Kalitza (aka Kim, aka Alissa) as “compulsively “Surrealism, shadows and the Spaghetti Western long of a band of outlaws, famed as far as France for bizarre—like Jung’s Anima who seems to arise from shot.” He launched his latest exhibit in March along his daring exploits and his bold flaunting of the male unconscious, yet clearly has independent with Tough Tiddlywinks (A Picture’s Worth $29.95), attempts by the government in Ireland to capture existence.” The overriding themes are freedom and a hybrid between a graphic novel and a traditionally him and rid the country of this most cunning and metamorphosis. Andrew Parkin did some of his illustrated adult novel. Tough Tiddlywinks is a notorious challenge to their authority.” All in military service for Britain as a Russian linguist in whodunit about the murder of a sleazeball Vancouver accordance with Duffy’s imagination and research. Berlin during the Cold War. 978-1-62857-431-9 real estate developer named “Condo King” Donald 1492320455 continued on page 31 REVIEW

poses of ‘re-education.’ Lau describes how SINGLE these ‘losers’ roam through the ramshackle parts of the city. Other stories are also full of dark cor- BLADE ners. In ‘Two-Part Invention,’ the narrator decides to date dead men and decides on Glenn Gould as her perfect match. In ‘Re- RUNNER run,’ the narrator, a past TV star with breast implants, loses her adoptive mother. In ‘O, BY CHERIE THIESSEN Woe Is Me,’ a young man’s tragic accident How does a single blade of grass in his teens sends him into a career dodging thank the sun? by Doretta Lau (Nightwood Editions $19.95) paintballs and rotten vegetables in a “Whoop the Freak” business. FTER AN UPBEAT, INTRIGUING, FU- One of the narrators in Doretta Lau’s turistic, opening story called ‘God collection reminds us photography is a

PHOTO Greek word meaning writing in light, but in ADamn, How Real Is This?,’ the stories in Doretta Lau’s svelte, debut col- this collection Lau is mostly writing out of LEUNG

lection, How does a single blade of grass KAI the shadows, investigating dark corners. I

loved these selections and ended up won- thank the sun?, seem to build on the one MING dering why it is that depressing stories of- before, reducing the need for excessive illu- With an MFA in writing from Columbia University, Doretta Lau lives in both mination. She is shining a narrow floodlight Vancouver and Hong Kong, while contributing to Artform, South China Morning ten seem to be the most engaging? I was in the dark. Post, and The Wall Street Journal (Asia). Her stories have appeared in Grain, quickly immersed in the life of a narrator Mostly about young, Asian Canadians Event and subTerrain. She is currently writing a screenplay and a novel. who sounds very much like the author her- coming of age in the 1990s, these stories are self, a sensitive Asian Canadian writing a frequently as much about pictures or im- rived from an interview with Chinese-born But it’s got precious little to do with screenplay for her MFA, living in Vancou- ages as they are about characters. Cigarettes, basketball star, Yao Ming, who, when asked basketball as Lau explores the teenage per- ver and impressively knowledgeable in mu- alcohol, loneliness, adoption, depression and about how his formative years with a team spective of a sorry Asian Canadian gang sic and photography. 978-0-88971-293-5 poverty; these are common leitmotifs. called the Shanghai Sharks had shaped his leader who has the hots for one of his girl The title story is the last one, shortlisted pro career, replied: “How does a single blade members as well as a penchant for beating Cherie Thiessen reviews fiction for the 2013 Journey Prize. Its title is de- of grass thank the sun?” up his small coterie of four for the pur- from Pender Island.

27 BC BOOKWORLD SUMMER 2014 HISTORIES NOT FORGOTTEN VISITING OUR ROOTS

This is Our Life Chinese Comfort Women Haida Material Heritage and Changing Testimonies from Imperial Japan’s Sex Slaves Museum Practice Peipei Qiu, with Su Zhiliang and Chen Lifei Cara Krmpotich and Laura Peers, with the Haida Repatriation Committee and staff of the Pitt Rivers Through personal narratives from twelve Museum and British Museum survivors, this book reveals the unfathomable This is the story of a transformative atrocities committed against Chinese women, visit by members of the Haida Nation abducted and enslaved as “comfort women” to the museums housing their by the Japanese military, during the cultural treasures. $VLD3DFLȴFZDU July 2014 | paperback | 978-0-7748-2541-2 July 2014 | paperback | 978-0-7748-2545-0

The Voyage of the Komagata Maru The Sikh Challenge to Canada’s Colour Bar, Expanded and Fully Revised Edition Hugh J.M. Johnston A sweeping revision and reconsideration of the Komogata Maru LQFLGHQWDVDGHȴQLQJ moment in Canadian, British Empire, and Indian History. April 2014 | paperback | 978-0-7748-2548-1

www.ubcpress.ca stay connected thought that counts

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28 BC BOOKWORLD SUMMER 2014 PRO FILE

But, no, there is much rotten in the SHAKESPEAREAN state of England. John’s main rival for JOUSTS & LONDON PLAGUE being the best jouster in the queendom is also Queen Elizabeth’s lover, “For a swordsman, historical nut and “For me, historical fiction is always a trip in a time the dashing and somewhat demented all-round fantasist time traveller,” Hum- machine, a fantasy lived.” — C.C. Humphreys Robert Deveraux, Earl of Essex. phreys says, “it didn’t get much better.” Meanwhile John must evade the equally He also got to hang out with Susan nyone who thinks writ- the 1980s NBC/BBC mini-series, AD— deadly machinations of Robert Cecil, Saradon and Ian MacShane. Anno Domini, C.C. Humphreys spent ten ers are withdrawn, ✫ another of Queen Elizabeth’s favourites. months filming in Tunisia, playing Me- Ultimately, in Shakespeare’s Rebel, BORN IN TORONTO, C.C. HUMPHREYS GREW stay-at-home types tellus, Gladiator (aka Caleb the Zealot), our hero must not only choreograph the up in Los Angeles until age seven, then flexing his pecs like Russell Crowe fight scenes for The Tragedy of Hamlet, Awho think up a bunch lived in London and the U.K. A third- and using a variety of weaponry. he is called upon, by fate and honour, to generation actor and writer on both sides of stuff in the safety of their choreograph the rescue of the realm itself. of his family, he was a schoolboy fencing pajamas might want to ✫ champion before he became a fight chore- HUMPHREYS FIRST NOVEL, THE FRENCH meet C.C. Humphreys ographer for actors. All of which has led ’ Executioner (Orion 2002), is about the to Shakespeare’s Rebel (Orion $34.99). — he would change their man who killed Anne Boleyn. It was C.C. Humphreys has integrated his shortlisted for the CWA Steel Dagger for way of thinking. knowledge of Hamlet and Shake- Thrillers in 2002. Its sequel was Blood speare, along with his experiences with Prior to turning his hand to his- Ties (Orion 2003). More recently A Place swordplay, to craft a novel that could have torical novels, Humphreys, during Called Armageddon (Orion 2011) recalls been called Shakespeare in Joust, except 35 years as an actor, has played the fall of Constantinople in 1453. Shakespeare is not the hero, only a sup- Hamlet, Clive Parnell in Coronation He has also written a trilogy of porting character. Street and Jack Absolute in Richard fanciful, “rip-roaring” historical novels Overly fond of whiskey and women, Brinsley Sheridan’s The Rivals. featuring Jack Absolute as the “007 of John Lawley, England’s finest swords- And let’s not overlook Caleb the the 1770s,” adopting the hero’s name man, just wants to cool his Elizabethan Gladiator. For his gladiator gig in from the aforementioned Sheridan play. jets and help his old pal, Will Shake- The third in this series, Absolute Honour speare, put on a new tragedy about a Dan- (McArthur 2006) typically follows the ish prince down at the new Globe Theatre. swashbuckling British soldier, Jack Ab- solute, as he cavorts from battlefields to bedrooms. Along the way he becomes a spy at the Jacobite Court in Rome. In Humphreys’ young adult fantasy novel, The Hunt of the Unicorn (Knopf, 2011), a girl falls into a tapestry at a New York City museum, and finds herself taken prisoner by a tyrant king. His earlier trilogy for young adults, The Runestone Saga, combines Norse myths, runic magic, time travel and horror. The trilogy consisting of The Fetch (Knopf 2006), Vendetta (Knopf 2007) and Pos- session (Knopf 2008) has been published in Russia, Greece, Turkey and Indonesia. Humphreys’ historical novels have been translated into a dozen languages. ✫ STICKING TO ENGLISH HISTORY, THE FORTH- coming novels, Plague (Random House $24.95) and Fire (Random House 2015), are thrillers set in London, in 1665 and 1666. Humphreys describes Plague as essentially: a religious fundamentalist serial killer story set during the Great Plague of London. “I grew up with the Plague,” he says. “Every English schoolboy hears the lurid C.C. Humphreys as tales—the red crosses on the doors, the Caleb the Gladiator in cries of ‘Bring out yer dead!’ The buboes! the 1980s mini-series, But it was not a period I’d especially AD—Anno Domini. studied. Then, as with most of my ideas, I became suddenly intrigued when I started C.C. Humphreys to delve into the Restoration world. “The ghastly effects of disease became a vivid backdrop to another story—this time, of highwaymen and thief takers, actresses and royalty—and serial killers. It was a world reeling from the horrors of civil war. Men and women were trying to cope with that legacy, and they were do- ing it with a new freedom of conscience C.C. Humphreys as Jack that until then had been ruthlessly sup- Absolute in Richard Brins- pressed. ley Sheridan’s The Rivals. “As well, it was a time when sober Humphreys returned to Canada in the 1990s, began puritans were suddenly ruled by a thor- writing in Vancouver, oughly debauched king. lived in London for twelve “So London 1665 was a marvelous PHOTO years, then returned to place to visit. I just thank all my stars that I do not have to live there!” GILBERT

Saltspring Island in 2006.

RON Shakespeare: 9781409114895; Plague: 9780385679923

29 BC BOOKWORLD SUMMER 2014 1(:)520 A Royal BC Museum Classic

The Indian History of British Columbia +DOYLQJWKH2UDQJH The Impact of the White Man E\0LFKDHO+HWKHULQJWRQ

Wilson Duff ,VDEHOODLVFRQÀQHGIRUOLIHWR WKHFROOHJHKHUPHGLHYDOLVWIDWKHU First published in 1964, The Indian History of British IRXQGHG1RZDEULOOLDQWDQG Columbia celebrates 50 years in print! EHDXWLIXO\RXQJZRPDQVKH VWDUWVWRTXHVWLRQKHUYRZRI  It has sold more than 20,000 copies in three editions FRQÀQHPHQWDQGORQJIRUIUHHGRP and a dozen printings. Wilson Duff’s seminal work is a classic summary of the effects of immigrant  SULQW settlement on the populations, cultures, economies $OVRDYDLODEOHDVDQHERRN and religions of First Nations in British Columbia.

“In the 50 years since Duff’s classic study was first published there have been many changes in $/62$9$,/$%/( the way interactions between First Nations and colonial cultures are conceptualized and discussed. The Indian History of British Columbia is now a 7KH$UFKLYH 7KH3OD\LQJ historical record in itself: a benchmark for the $15.95 &DUSHW &DUG profound changes that have taken place in our 978-0-7718-9483-1 0LFKDHO 0LFKDHO understanding of the topic over half a century. At the +HWKHULQJWRQ +HWKHULQJWRQ same time, it remains a useful source of information   for researchers, students and the general public.” – Martha Black, from her Foreword ´+HWKHULQJWRQKDVPDVWHUHGWKH *ROGPHGDOIRUEHVWÀFWLRQ DUWRI FUHDWLQJSRWHQWLDODFWLRQLQ &DQDGD:HVWUHJLRQ PLFURÀFWLRQµ ²,QGHSHQGHQW3XEOLVKHU All Royal BC Museum books are ²%URNHQ3HQFLO  %RRN$ZDUGV distributed by Heritage Group.

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30 BC BOOKWORLD SUMMER 2014 FICTIONA to Z Depression-era Prairies The mystery of a false identity Set largely in Stettler, Alberta, and echoing some of A former president of the Federation of BC Writers, the bleakness of Sinclair Ross’ view of the Prairies, Margaret Thompson has published her first novel Meredith Quartermain’s Depression-era first for adults, The Cuckoo’s Child (Brindle & Glass novel, Rupert’s Land (NeWest $20.95), unites two, $19.95), about middle-aged Livvy Alvarsson who, young and restless spirits. in trying to save her brother, discovers her own Growing up in the agrarian identity is false. The Cuckoo’s Child follows Livvy dustbowl, Cora Wagoner wants to on her travels to the U.K. to uncover her actual study science rather than pig-sty heritage. Thompson has written six other books, procreation; Hunter George is a including collections of essays and short stories. Cree who prefers his grand- A former English teacher, she immigrated to B.C. mother’s stories of the legendary in 1967, and taught in small communities before Chevy Wisahkecahk to the demeaning settling in Victoria. 9781927366295 Meredith Quartermain Stevens policies of the Indian Agent. On page 233, they ride her horse Arrow past the Annie O’Sullivan, the protagonist in her earlier From B.C. to Dachau Nuisance Grounds to share the challenging thrillers. Instead it’s about Toni Murphy who, at A DNA test in Danny Unrau’s first novel entitled freedom of scrubland wilderness for the final eighteen, was wrongly convicted of the murder of You are the Boy (Friesens $19.86) sends the fifth of the story. 978-1-927063-36-1 her younger sister. Her boyfriend at the time was protagonist Ben Ruhe on a search for his roots. He also convicted. Out of prison by age thirty-four, Toni discovers that a Jewish infant was mysteriously left Grief, lust, infidelity, madness returns to her hometown on Vancouver Island, very on a Mennonite doorstep in the Ukraine nearly eighty Having emigrated from Dublin to Canada in 1999, anxious not to violate any terms of her parole. While years before he was born. It turns out this child was Anakana Schofield won the 2013 Amazon.ca First her former boyfriend, Ryan, is convinced he can his maternal grandmother who was adopted secretly Novel Award for her novel, unravel the murder case, her own mother is less sure into a Mennonite family in the 1870s. He explores Malarky (Biblioasis $19.95). about her innocence. In order to clear her name, Toni Mennonite and Jewish history, from southern Structured as a series of 20 must re-engage with a nasty cabal of women who Manitoba to British Columbia, from the Ukraine to

episodes, Schofield’s darkly comic once made her life miserable in high school. 9781250057518 Siberia, from Jerusalem to Dachau. As the author of first novel is mainly narrated by previous collections Saints, Sinners & Angels and an Irish mother who is coping Life after prostate cancer Rogues, Rascals & Rare Gems, Unrau has a BA in with grief, lust, infidelity and Aaron Shepard of Victoria has used his Shuswap sociology, English and religious studies, and an MA Anakana Schofield madness while scrubbing the childhood, his experiences as a wildlife technician and Ph.D in Jewish studies. 978-1770975330 floors of her country and his outdoor knowledge to create a farmhouse. The novel received advance fictional valley in the B.C. Interior Rescuing an Ojibway father attention due to its selection for the Barnes for his debut novel, When is a In Richard Wagamese’s Medicine Walk (M&S & Noble Discover Great New Writers Man (Brindle & Glass $19.95). $29.95) we meet 16-year-old Franklin Starlight as he program. It was published by Oneworld It details Paul Rasmussen, an saddles up to ride into town, feeling compelled to in the UK and other Commonwealth ethnographer, who attempts to rescue his dissolute father, Eldon, someone he doesn’t countries in 2013, the same year in restart his life after surviving even know very well. Eldon is a drunk, dying of liver which it was shortlisted for the Ethel prostate cancer. Rasmussen’s cancer in a flophouse. Frank dutifully accedes to his Wilson Fiction Prize awarded for the interviews with locals stir up father’s request to be taken into the mountains, so he best work of fiction by a B.C. writer. bitter memories about long-ago can be buried in a traditional Ojibway way. As they 978-1-92684-538-8 flooding for a hydroelectric dam. ride into the backcountry, Eldon’s past comes to light: A murderer returns Aaron Shepard is not to be his poverty-stricken childhood, and his service in Ex-realtor Chevy Stevens’ fourth confused with a Washington State the Korean War. Frank finally gets to know the father novel, That Night (St. Martin’s storyteller and children’s book he hardly ever saw. 9780771089183 $19.95) is not about author with the same name. the fictional 9781927366271 Teen fantasy island realtor Joanna Wiebe’s teen fantasy- suspense novel The Unseemly Education of Anne Merchant (BenBella $19.95) is set on a small mysterious island that houses a boarding school for some of the Joanna Wiebe world’s wealthiest teenagers. The

Aaron protagonist, a gifted art student named Anne Merchant Shepard can’t understand how her father, a poor funeral parlour director, could have possibly paid for her to attend the exclusive school called Cania Christy. No one will tell Anne why a line is painted across the island or

why she is forbidden to cross it. 978-1-939529-32-9

Women and small towns Sunshine Coast-based UBC creative writing student Janine Alyson Young was born to backpacking ski bums during the 1980s. As a child, she read every book she could in her local library. Her debut collection of fiction Hideout Hotel (Caitlin $18.95) contains several stories of small-town women taking refuge in unusual places, set in coastal BC, the Yukon and Western Australia. Young is young—at 28—married, with a son, and works

as a Generation Y taco stand operator. 978-1-927575-46-8

continued on page 33

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32 BC BOOKWORLD SUMMER 2014 review FICTION

Mantis Dreams: The Journal of Dr. Dexter Ripley by Adam Pottle (Caitlin Press $21.95)

N FRANZ KAFKA’S VITRIOLIC FROLIC Metamorphosis, a The narrator of Mantis Dreams is a brilliant, vindictive, traveling salesman I handicapped professor—nasty to everyone. named Gregor Samsa wakes to find himself inex- stands in his way and political correctness time and again, and betrays her plicably transformed into a to insult, hurt, and hu- too far, and it often confidence, obviously thinking miliate others without exposes itself to hy- she’ll always be there for him. huge, monstrous bug. reprisal. pocrisy.” Dexter berates students in his Ninety-nine years later, in Dexter simply ✫ English literature class, knowing The Confabulist (Knopf doesn’t care what HAVING A STRANGE DIS- he risks censure from the depart- Adam Pottle’s Mantis Dreams, $29.95) by Steven Gal- other people think. ease is not hurting ment head, partly because he the narrator of a private journal loway is a suspense- He has a deeper un- Dexter’s academic believes his growing academic has been having a recurring CherieThiessen novel about the murder of derstanding of our reputation. His body dream in which he has been reputation will keep him immune. magician, Harry Houdi- transformed into a gigantic ‘King inherent human despair (the way isn’t twisted with amyotrophic The professor knows that ni, and Martin Strauss, Kong’ Mantis, stomping on build- Stephen Hawking has a deeper lateral sclerosis (ALS) like Hawk- getting drunk, assaulting a the man who landed the ings and people who appear to understanding of the universe). ing’s, but Dexter is understand- handicapped beggar, insulting fatal punch. 9780307400857 be smiling and waving at him. His rancor is the triumphant voice ably talked-about in his field and the home care staff and abusing In fact, their attack upon him is of enlightenment. His disability he is receiving invitations to sit the residents could well lead imminent. has provided a means of dealing on panels and give papers and to his eviction, but he does it ALSO RECEIVED Confined to a wheelchair, with and understanding the insig- keynote speeches at conferences. anyway, assuming his disability Pottle’s protagonist, Dr. Dexter nificance of human life. In contrast, his sister Maggie is will enable him to be excused. Morven and the Horse Clan (Great Ripley (believe it or not) could ✫ a saint. Still consumed with guilt It’s one way of putting his dis- Plains $14.95) by Luanne Arm- be likened to Kafka’s bedrid- “MANTIS DREAMS STARTED WITH over the branding iron episode, ability to use. strong 978-1-926531-74-8 • Mirror den protagonist if it weren’t for Dexter’s voice,” Pottle says. “He a guilt that her abusive brother “Mantis Dreams grew out of on the Floor (Anvil $18) by George his stoicism and wit… And if it Bowering 978-1927380956 • Open weren’t for the double tragedies Secret (Simon & Schuster $18.99) by Deryn Colier 9781476716800 • The in his impressionable years that Tragic Marriages yanked both his parents out of his of Doctor Geneva life… and if weren’t for the emo- Song (Libros Lib- tional trauma he suffered when his ertad $20) by Rob- sister held a red-hot branding iron ert N. Friedland over his face… And if it weren’t 978-1-926763-30-9 • for his scientifically explainable Devil With a Gun Robert Friedland disability. (Midnight Ink $17.50) by M.C. Grant In his mid-40s, Ripley has 9780738734996 • In the Company of He- been hammered by Charcot- roes (Granville Island $24.95) by Ted Marie-Tooth disease (CMT), an Hunt 9781926991184 • Oh, My Darling inherited and incurable disorder (Harper Collins $24.99) by Shaena of the peripheral nervous system Lambert 978-1-44342-434-9 • Love at characterized by a progressive Last Sight: Stories (NeWest $17.95) loss of muscle tissue and touch by Thea Bowering 9781927063347 • sensation. He’s wracked by pain Paradise and Elsewhere (Bibloasis and tremors and confined to a 18.95) by Kathy Page 978-1-927428- wheelchair. 59-7 • Local Customs (Dundurn But Ripley, our narrator, has $16.99) by Audrey Thomas 978- “Mantis Dreams made a choice to refuse the medi- 1459707986 • Lions (Pilot Hill) by grew out of my Kevin Roberts 978-1-927046-30-2 • cation that would slow his deterio- obsession with dis- The Coffee Painter (Nice $14.94) by ration, relieve some of his pain, ability and my dis- Veronica Schreiber 9781493764655 and even allow him to walk again. satisfaction with the • Human Solutions (Skyhorse $29.95) Dexter could be independent but way it’s portrayed in by Avi Silberstein 978-1628737141 • he chooses instead to take one of literature.” Jane and the Whales (Caitlin $18.95) the much-needed beds in a care ADAM POTTLE by Andrea Rout- home, gloating over the fact that it ley 9781927575239 frees him to devote himself totally • Crush (Granville to his work with no distractions, began yammering in my head one exploits to the hilt, she has been my obsession with disability and Island $19.95) by great meals, massage therapy as day and he just wouldn’t shut up. trying to convince Dexter to leave my dissatisfaction with the way Jennifer Fraser needed, 24-hour help, and even a He said some interesting things the home to live with her and her it’s portrayed in literature,” says 9781926991153 • A Jennifer Fraser driver who takes him to the uni- though, so I wrote them down, and son, 15-year-old Randall, the Adam Pottle, currently pursuing a Walk on Broken versity where he teaches English within a few months I had a novel.” only one Dexter does not bait. doctoral degree in English litera- Glass: Elisabeth, Empress of Austria literature. Pottle is tired of political cor- Conversely, Randall admires and ture and teaching at the University (Granville Island $18.95) by Gloria His doctor calls his decision rectness when it comes to physical loves Dexter as the lone male of Saskatchewan. M. Allan 9781926991290 • The Prayer unprecedented. Ripley’s reasons challenges. “I know from experi- figure in his family and the feeling “To me, disability is so com- Book Cowboy (Shoal’s Edge) by for refusing treatment are com- ence that disability discomforts is covertly returned. plex an idea that it’s impossible Gordon A. Bailey 9780987947413 plicated. The professor claims that people,” he says. “I personally Dexter loves teaching, he to say exactly what it means in • Raging Star Dust Lands: 3 (Dou- his illness has enabled him to see have no problem discussing my loves living in the care home, Canadian fiction; rather, it’s a bleday $19.95) by Moira Young himself in a deliriously wonder- hearing impairment, but I know and he needs Maggie and Randall disruptive presence. It under- 9780385679244 • my[sic] June (Ron- sdale $18.95) by Danial Neil 978- ful way; that is, it has opened the other people who are reluctant to especially, and yet his behavior mines conventional narratives, 1553803355 • The Wind is not a River door to a privileged perspective: discuss their condition. threatens to ruin all three things. and makes literature fresh again.” (HarperCollins $26.99) by Brian Pay- the more disabled he becomes, the “Disability is one of the last Maggie is overwrought at the After an award-winning chap- ton 9780062279972 • The Fugitives: clearer he sees the world. sacred subjects, a final taboo, things her brother is teaching her book, Bereft, and a book of poetry, The MacHugh Memoirs 1810 ($20) Schopenhauer might approve, which makes it even more inter- son, attitudes that will not make Beautiful Mutants, this is Adam by James L. McWilliams 9780991- esting to write about. Dexter and the teenager’s life any easier. Pottle’s first novel. 978-1-927575-25-3 but we don’t buy that. What we 794911 • Chorus of Mushrooms, 20th see instead is someone who is I both share a suspicion of inflated Randall has become another barb Anniversary Edition (NeWest $19.95) Cherie Thiessen reviews using his illness to get power and political correctness, particularly that Dexter can use to twist in his by Hiromi Goto 978-1927063484 privilege, to roll over whoever within the academy. It can push sister’s skin. He goads his sister fiction from Pender Island.

33 BC BOOKWORLD SUMMER 2014 review TEENLIT

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Tanya Lloyd Kyi’s launch for Anywhere But Here at Vancouver Kidsbooks was shared with Gabrielle Prendergast (left) for her novel, Capricious (Orca 2014), a follow-up to Audacious (Orca 2013). WORK HARD, BE GOOD TANYA

Anywhere But Here by Tanya Lloyd Kyi Her parents taught her how to find her (Simon Pulse $11.99) away around a vegetable garden and a res- taurant that was opened when she was ten. ELF-MERCHANDIZING IS THE WAY OF THE “I can balance a lot of cokes on a tray,” she Sworld these days. Writers are increas- says, “and translate 2 e s/s, wh into two eggs, ingly expected to be go-getters who sunny-side up, white toast.” enjoy Facebooking and Tweeting. Often The limitations of small town life led they form power couples or write reviews her to skedaddle to Vancouver where, by that lavish praise on writers who are inclined age 21, she became one of the province’s to return the favour. bestselling authors by ghostwriting and as- But some authors still prefer to be dis- sembling travel and photography books for creetly prolific. Maybe they’re shy, maybe Whitecap Books, “raving about the beauty they’re naïve. Or maybe they’re nostalgic of places that I had never actually visited.” for the days when publishers were supposed Her main uncredited accomplishment was to do the job of making a book public. Canada: A Visual Journey. Then again, maybe they prefer to stay After a stint as a staff writer for the Com- home and become better writers by reading a monwealth Games in 1994, Kyi attended the lot of books. Tanya Lloyd Kyi read 65 books University of Victoria. in 2013. She’s hoping to read 75 in 2014. Kyi’s first book not dominated by pho- She got ahead the old fashioned way—by tographs was an inspirational anthology paying her dues. entitled Canadian Girls Who Rocked the After 22 books with three Canadian World (Whitecap, 2001), illustrated by publishers, Tanya Lloyd Kyi now has a YA Joanna Clark. It profiles more than 25 novel, Anywhere But Here, with Simon unusual, creative and courageous women & Schuster, based on her upbringing in born in Canada. the Kootenays. It combines her memories Promotional material notes she was of “the good and the bad that comes with an avid Ultimate player who married “the small town life.” world’s only Burmese occupational thera- Sixteen-year-old Cole Owens wants pist.” In the 21st century she bumped her community-minded but globally connected to escape his small-town life and pursue surname Lloyd in favour of her Burmese his passion for filmmaking, but instead of married name when she published her first spending time behind the lens, Cole finds young adult novel, Truth (Orca, 2003) as himself cooking for his drunken dad, giv- Tanya Lloyd Kyi. ing the local stripper a safe ride home and Anywhere But Here was written as Kyi acting as a dating service for his best friend. was preparing to send her youngest child We are proud Everything seems to be conspiring to hold to kindergarten. “I knew I wanted to spend to be nominated Cole in his hometown forever, including a more time writing fiction,” she says, “so for a Libris award wounded deer, the wacky ex-girlfriend, the I shipped a draft off to Patricia Ocampo for Bookseller pushy school counsellor. Are his relation- of the Year! in Toronto. She was my cross-my-fingers- ships a spider web, waiting to trap him, or and-pray-hard agent choice because she had a net, ready to save him? great publishing know-how, experience in O penOpen year-round year-round with with over over 25,00025,000 titles titles plus plus great a great selection selection ✫ marketing and editing, and she just looked of Canadian authors, used books, art supplies, and gifts. of Canadian authors, used books, art supplies, and gifts. BORN IN VANCOUVER IN 1973, TANYA LLOYD so darned friendly in her photo. She’s the Visit us at www.galianoislandbooks.com Kyi was raised mainly in Creston in eastern one who arranged to have Anywhere But V isit us at www.galianoislandbooks.com British Columbia after her parents opted to Here published by Simon Pulse [an imprint 250.539.3340 • [email protected] escape from the big city. They also lived in of Simon & Shuster].” 978-1442480698 76 Madrona Drive, Galiano [email protected] Island, BC V0N 1P0 250.539.3340 a nearby community on the eastern shore Please Join Us 76for ourMadrona Drive Galiano Island BC V0N 1P0 Annual Literary Festival • www.galianoliteraryfestival.com of Kootenay Lake called Crawford Bay [For more on Tanya Lloyd Kyi, visit (pop. 350). abcbookword.com]

34 BC BOOKWORLD SUMMER 2014 poetry OBIT

ANCOUVER POET I was so afraid of my In the process he began working and Downtown name that when a tough closely with Libby Davies and V alley urchin gang leader advocating for the introduction Eastside activist in another new location of free injection sites. Bud Osborn, the unofficial asked my name, I said “I realize there are not many archivist of Canada’s poorest my name was Raymond people who can advocate from or something, but this the bottom, who have lived at the neighbourhood and its most raggedy kid replied, bottom,” he said. As a city council eloquent and forceful author ‘No, it isn’t. It’s Bud!’ candidate for COPE in 1999, Os- and spokesman, died on May And I have insisted on born became a fierce adversary of being called ‘Bud’ ever Mayor Philip Owen and met with 6, 2014, at age 66, after being since.” federal Health Minister Allan diagnosed with pneumonia. Osborn began to Rock. He did remarkably well at consider himself as a the polls for someone who could Vancouver East MP Libby perpetual bud on a tree, have been dismissed as a former Davies, a longtime friend, said never to bloom or come alcoholic and drug addict. Osborn was a hero to the people to life. He briefly at- Although Osborn didn’t win of the DTES who understood that BUD tended Ohio Northern election, Mayor Owen reversed harm reduction and safe injection University and took a his stance and accepted most of sites are important health mea- OSBORN job with VISTA in Har- the policies that Osborn and Da- sures and a fundamental human 1947-2014 lem as a counselor. He vies had been advocating. right. “I credit him with being able became a drug addict, His collection of poetry from to change the way people perceive caught in the meat-grinder life of medium of poetry to move and married and had a son. His family Arsenal Pulp and a CD of songs, drug users,” Davies said. poverty, homelessness, addiction, educate others.” accompanied him to Toronto, but both called Hundred Block Rock, Osborn’s poetry worked in and violence.” Bud Osborn was born in Battle then his wife and son left him to were released to coincide with tandem with his activism for A chapbook by Bud Osborn Creek, Michigan and raised in go to Oregon. his performance at the Vancouver people living on the street and called Keys to Kingdoms (Get Toledo, Ohio. His father, a re- Osborn lived on the mean Folk Music Festival with bassist against poverty. To The Point Publishing 1998) porter for the Toledo Blade, was streets of Toronto, Toledo and Wendy Atkinson and guitarist His first publisher, Brian received the City of Vancouver a Second World War bomber pilot New York until he moved to the David Lester, followed by a Kaufman of Anvil Press, recalls: Book Award. whose plane was shot down and Downtown Eastside of Vancouver cross-country tour. “In 1994, Bud delivered his “Bud was an eloquent and he became a prisoner of war. He where he eventually entered de- See abcbookworld.com for typewritten manuscript, Lone- passionate spokesperson for the received his father’s exact name, tox. “I stopped running and tried more info, including a Bud Os- some Monsters, to the Anvil dispossessed,” said publisher Walton Homer Osborn. His fa- to face myself,” he says. born interview. A commemora- offices on the second floor of Brian Lam of Arsenal Pulp Press. ther committed suicide in jail, as a As a former addict who was tive video is in the works. the Lee Building at Main and “As a recovering addict, he knew traumatized alcoholic, when Bud ‘seven years clean,’ Osborn be- “He could communicate with Broadway. And what I saw in all too well the struggles of those Osborn was three. Osborn himself came a board member of the Van- people,” Libby Davies told the Bud’s work then was the same who live with poverty and ad- tried to commit suicide with 200 couver/Richmond Health Board, Georgia Straight, “and get them to thing I see now when I open one diction, and dedicated his life to Aspirins when he was 15. the Carnegie Centre Association understand what was going on, and of his books: raw, brave, human, documenting their experiences, “Amid our peregrinations Board and VANDU (Vancouver he always spoke the truth, always. unadorned depictions of people including his own, using the through poverty neighborhoods, Area Network of Drug Users). He never shied away from it.”

The Hills Are Shadows by Joan Givner Lost in an unfamiliar world, a girl named Tennyson and her friends search for home and parents and have strange, dangerous encounters with humans and non-humans.

“Plenty of action . . . a fantasy to transport readers from their daily reality to another world.” C.M. MAGAZINE

thistledownpress.com THISTLEDOWN PRESS 978-1-927068-91-5 • $12.95 • JUVENILE NOVEL

35 BC BOOKWORLD SUMMER 2014 ✦ ✦ www.libroslibertad.ca ✦ ✦ www.libroslibertad.ca ✦

The Tragic Marriages of Wellspring of Love LETTERS Doctor Geneva Song a novel by Doris Riedweg a novel by Robert N. Friedland The novel turns again to the

Reading this novel is Cresswell family of her two ✦ like reading the writer’s earlier novels, and to the CTVeeee & Mike Gift of the Gabriola

www.libroslibertad.ca heart, and entering theme of familial love. It www.libroslibertad.ca www.libroslibertad.ca the world where doesn’t take long for Doris THE ARTICLE ON ME WAS SUPER AND I’VE THE LATEST BCBW SENT ME TO VOLUME ONE

✦ Chinese women become to spring a surprise: the got good comments on it. But I hasten to in Duncan to purchase: 2 copies of the Corky intertwined with the West. warmth, loyalty and stability Doctor Geneva Song of the family is threatened add that the Global TV network and I sepa- Williams book, one copy of the Jack is clearly destined when one of their children rated in August of Hodgins novel, one copy of a YA book called become one of fiction’s is lured into the wretched legendary women, life of Vancouver’s squalid 2013. Thirty-seven Victoria, 2 copies of the 7th edition of Jayne but in truth, Downtown Eastside, the Paperback 6 x 9 in years ended in three Seagrave’s camping book and one more I it is because she is a real Paperback 6 x 9 in drugs and prostitution that 194 pages 200 pages minutes. No warn- forget because I’m in an internet cafe and I woman of flesh and blood ISBN: 9781926763309 ISBN: 9781926763323 seem so far removed from the and passion... $20.00 $20.00 Cresswell’s Prairie farm... ✦ ing, no compensa- don’t have my bag of books in front of me.

✦ tion. I am now very But there you go, just because of BCBW, I Purple Haze Humility poetry by Candice James poetry by Károly Fellinger happy doing stories purchased 5 books. These poems translated by Márta Gyermán-Tóth for CTV. The article I read BCBW cover-to-cover, including Károly’s poetry Mike McCardell situate the failed to mention I the ads because I often buy books from those “I/You” ranges from the of the lyric’s sublime to the am with CTV. Other than that, the story publishers’ blurbs, which tend to be attrac- spoken voice ordinary, from the general and exposure was wonderful. tive and appealing. Also, I picked up ten in a passionate, ✦ www.libroslibertad.ca www.libroslibertad.ca sometimes to the very Mike McCardell copies of BCBW specifically to distribute personal and it

erotic, www.libroslibertad.ca is graced with Vancouver to strategic readers between here and ✦ interrogation of imagination European motifs Duncan. When I hand out each copy I point and feeling George Seferis. and imagery: that is looking for taste of the out how important it is to consider a $25 Paperback 5.5 x 8.5 in Poems cosmos beyond answers... Paperback 5.5 x 8.5 in Viz is a wiz subscription. 106 pages poems by George Seferis the in between 92 pages ISBN: 9781926763316 translated by Manolis ISBN: 9781926763293 water... I WAS PLEASED TO SEE STEPHEN VIZINCZEY’S Susan Yates $18.00 $20.00 ... everyone is in need letter in the Spring 2014 issue of BCBW. I Gabriola Island

Ken Kirkby – of all the others. ✦

Cloe and Alexandra recall reading a few reviews and essays by Warrior Painter We must look for man poetry by Cloe and Alexandra ✦ a biography by Patricia Fraser wherever we can find translated by Manolis Mr. Vizinczey in BC BookWorld over the Cross border lit Ken Kirkby – him. When on his way Cloe and years, and I hope he writes more for your Warrior Painter to Thebes Oedipus Alexandra are pages. He is best known as a novelist, espe- I DELIGHT IN READING BC BOOKWORLD WHEN reveals that encountered the two contemporary Kirkby’s truth Sphinx, his answer to Greek cially for In Praise of Older Women, but is my friends take the ferry to Vancouver Is- is stranger Poetesses than fiction. An its riddle was: “Man”. also a brilliant essayist, as can be seen in his land and send me a copy they pick up

with passionate internationally That simple word onboard. Can I subscribe to read it online acclaimed destroyed the monster. voices that work books The Rules of Chaos and Truth and artist, student We have many from within ✦ Lies in Literature. Let’s hope another book instead of paper? That would save postage, of quantum today’s human www.libroslibertad.ca monsters to destroy. condition to www.libroslibertad.ca of essays is on the way. By the way, crossing border, and all of that inconvenience. mechanics and a Let us think of the 21st C. warrior, describe its pain Bobbi Keppel ✦ Paperback 5.5 x 8.5 in answer of Oedipus. and pleasure; wasn’t that portrait in the photo of he is, best of 236 pages Paperback 6 x 9 in all, a modern ISBN: 9781926763286 200 pages two voices Stendhal, not Balzac? Portland, Maine day Alchemist $20.00 so similar and yet Paperback 5.5 x 8.5 in ISBN: 9781926763262 Carl Rosenberg turning paintings into gold and gold into 253 pages $20.00 so different Send letters or emails to: fish – or more precisely, into healthy, fish- ISBN: 9781926763231 in their expression Vancouver, BC BC BookWorld, 3516 W. 13th Ave., bearing streams. $25.00 of the internal. [Vizinczey has pictures of Stendhal and Balzac Vancouver, BC V6R 2S3 in his writing room. Photos were taken in [email protected] ✦ www.libroslibertad.ca ✦ ✦ www.libroslibertad.ca ✦ ✦ front of both. Photos misnamed.—Ed.] Letters may be edited for clarity & length.

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36 BC BOOKWORLD SUMMER 2014 Federation of British Columbia Writers Up-coming Events QUICKIES

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37 BC BOOKWORLD SUMMER 2014 bcbooklook.com A new, vibrant, on-line information hub for B.C. literature

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POACHERS, POLLUTERS & Politics 4 4
A Fishery Officer’s Career 

40 BC BOOKWORLD SUMMER 2014