Autumn 2005 Volume 19

OUTDOORS “The world is my pumpkin, here is a bit of the gypsy Prince George is my home.” in Vivien Lougheed, —Vivien Lougheed in the Sahara Desert who traces her heritage, through her father, to the nomadic clans in TRomania. Born in Winnipeg in 1943 and partially raised in northern Saskatchewan, she has visited more than 50 countries and written guidebooks about Mexico, Bolivia, Belize and Central America, plus stories about Tibet and Iran. When her grandfather bought her a bicycle at age nine, she was gone. “My mom would say don’t go off our street,” she says, “and I’d be on the other side of the city.” At 16, Lougheed quit school and left home, hooked on travel. At 18, she took the Greyhound to the Rockies and decided she would one day have to FROM live in the mountains. Lougheed moved to Prince George CHICKEN BUS TO in 1970 and co-wrote the Kluane Na- tional Park hiking guide with her hus- TATSHENSHINI OR band John Harris in 1997. Together they have hiked in the Tatshenshini BUST River area just below the Yukon too, can do the trails in places like verted school buses in Latin America that border, as well as in the wilder- Tumbler Ridge, Mackenzie and transport passengers and livestock. VIVIEN LOUGHEED ness parks, Mount Edziza and Haida Gwaii. “I want to get them “I used to travel as cheaply as I could,” BIBLIOGRAPHY Spatzizi, and they spent years out of their vehicles at 100 Mile she says, “so I could afford to do more. I exploring Nahanni National House to walk around their 45- don’t like the beach scene. I like to get • From the Chilcotin to the Chilkoot: Selected Hikes of Northern British Park (during which time she minute trail,” she says. “Too many into the mountains. I like to do the hik- Columbia (Caitlin, 2005). and John Harris co-wrote American motor homes on ing and learn some of the language. And • Adventure Guide to Mexico’s Tungsten John: Being an their way to Alaska barrel past try and get off the beaten path.” Pacific Coast (Hunter, 2005). Account of Some Inconclu- my favourite spots without Lougheed says she doesn’t travel to • Adventure Guide to Bolivia HEATHER (Hunter, 2004). sive but Nonetheless In- RAMSAY taking the time to stop and change the world. During a recent lec- • Adventure Guide to Belize formative Attempts to look around. I want to entice ture to a secondary school class, she ad- (Hunter, 2002). Reach the South Nahanni River by Foot the guy from Alabama who is going to vised, “You have no power, you don’t • Diary of a Lake, co-edited with and Bicycle). Alaska to stay a little longer.” know the culture, you are a foreigner. John Harris (Repository, 2002). • Tungsten John: Being an Account Now a travel columnist for the Prince Lougheed got her start in the travel What you can do is learn there without of Some Inconclusive but George Citizen, Lougheed has restricted writing game with a self-published title, judgment and come home and make Nonetheless Informative Attempts to her wanderlust to home turf for From Central America by Chicken Bus, which sure the things you don’t like don’t hap- Reach the South Nahanni River by the Chilcotin to the Chilkoot (Caitlin she says has sold over 10,000 copies in pen in your own country.” Foot and Bicycle, co-author with John Harris (New Star, 2000). Press $24.95), a guide to the mountains three editions. As a lab technician on va- She is currently working on a novel • Kluane Park Hiking Guide, and hiking trails of Northern B.C. cation in 1986, she crossed from Mexico that takes place in Winnipeg and co-author with John Harris With a bright photo of children on into Guatemala, then into El Salvador. Cuba. 1-894759-03-8 (New Star, 1997). the cover, Lougheed hopes From the She and her traveling companion • Fobidden Mountains (Caitlin, 1996). • Central America by Chicken Bus, Chilcotin to the Chilkoot will encourage Joanne Armstrong coined the Heather Ramsay writes from (Repository, 1993). Mr. and Mrs. Motor Home that they, term chicken bus to describe the con- Queen Charlotte City. 9 BOOKWORLD AUTUMN 2005 FICTION WRITES OF SPRING First introduced in Bill Deverell’s The Dance of Shiva, crafty defence lawyer Bad boy Barry returns Arthur Beauchamp reappears in Deverell’s 14th title, April Fool (M&S Barry Delta in Toy Gun reappears as a reluctant good $36.99). While his new wife decides to live guy in Dennis E. Bolen’s third amalgam of bleak humour atop a tree in order and compassionate urges on Vancouver’s mean streets. to protect eagles from loggers, Beauchamp is iven the cover of where ugly behaviour, brutal crimes, lies again retrieved from and deceptions prevail. Bolen renders To live is to retirement from Dennis E. Bolen’s this world with such visceral intensity fictional that you can almost feel the drug experiment... Garibaldi Island Toy Gun (Anvil $26), to defend a cravings, the hangovers, the adrenalin Bill Deverell G This time we’ve notorious jewel a stark image of a handgun rush that comes with violence. devoted half of thief on murder and rape charges. This Everything is convincing, nothing is courtroom thriller opens: “With envy, against an orange background, glossed over. Obviously Bolen knows this BC BookWorld to Arthur Beauchamp watches juncos most readers will be surprised to territory from the inside out. fiction titles. mating in the raspberry patch. A Ultimately Toy Gun is a novel of re- See pages 13-31 bumblebee tests a daffodil. There is lust discover this novel is more psy- demption, but first the worst has to hap- in his garden, spring’s vitality. Maybe Write us and tell us what you his sap will start flowing again too, and pen so redemption can begin. Just about chological study and moral ex- think: [email protected] the lazy lout below will rise from flaccid everything that can go wrong for Barry hibernation. The desire is there, but the ploration than hard-boiled crime does. Disaster piles upon disaster as his equipment faulty. When was his last personal and professional We want to draw our own conclusions. erection – a month ago? A half-hearted thriller. life spiral out of control. In Toy Gun Bolen takes us for a brac- attempt at takeoff. But he knows he As the third instalment He finally bottoms out to ing ride, lacing sordid truths with hu- must accept and move on. We age, in Bolen’s trilogy about fed- find himself a mentally mour and wit, mixing horror with the faculties rust. Some men lose their hair. In compensation, Arthur has kept his, a eral parole officer Barry and physically broken banality of everyday life, reflecting back thick grey thatch.” 0-7710-2711-7 Delta, following Stupid man. There’s something to us our own messed-up lives. He forces Crimes (1992) and contrived about the plot in us to look at things we don’t want to look Krekshuns (1997), it focuses this regard, and of course at, jarring us out of middle class com- more on the inner machi- the love of a good woman placency, and in doing so he reveals the nations of its characters (the waitress at the Yale, no narrowness of the worlds we live inside. Hitler’s gold than on crimes committed. SHEILA less) has much to do with 1-895636-68-X A delusionary Aryan killer A self-confessed ‘burn MUNRO his own redemption. Sheila Munro lives in Comox named Swastika out’ eyeing early retire- Meanwhile Barry won- where she is writing a novel. arrives on the ment, bad boy Barry Delta drinks too ders if even one of his clients can be West Coast much (way too much), cheats on his wife, saved. In so many cases the dam- and heads to has trouble curbing his glib tongue, and age done to them in childhood present-day is given to bouts of self-deception and is irrevocable. When the foul- Barkerville in self-loathing in about equal measure. His mouthed, drugged-out prosti- search of Hitler’s gold work in the underworld of addiction, tute Chantal declares, “I’m in Michael Slade’s eleventh gruesome prostitution and street crime has left him always going to be on the streets,” Dennis E. Bolen: thriller Swastika (Penguin $24), a fast- visceral intensity paced, RCMP procedural inspired by the jaded and exhausted. he is unable to contradict her. WW II archives of co-author ’s Bolen, a former parole officer him- To keep going, Barry Delta has to Jay Clarke father, Jack “Johnny Clarke,” who flew 47 self, deftly weaves the stories of Barry believe that if even one former inmate combat missions against the Third Reich. Delta’s life and loves (somehow women doesn’t re-offend, then his job “What is it about the Cariboo that appeals will have been worth- find him irresistible and more than one to the Germanic mind?” Slade writes. “Are of them wants to have his baby), his while. In grappling with the mountains evocative of the Bavarian boozy afternoons at the Yale Hotel, and this theme of redemp- Alps? Are the thickets reminiscent of how the desperate escapades of the parolees tion, increasingly the the Black Forest used to feel? Is it the on his caseload. novel is marred by pi- sense of Lebenstraum in its wide-open We witness the crazed excitement of ous lectures about the spaces, the yearning for elbow room that a coke addict preparing to commit a rob- need for love and for- drove the Nazis to invade Russia? Whatever bery and the humiliation of a prostitute giveness.

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