Fiction

Far From Botany Bay / Rosa Jordan

ISBN 978-088982-249-8 • 372 pp • $22.95 • pb • October 2008 • Novel

At age 21, Mary Broom was sentenced to hang for the crime of stealing a cloak. When her sentence was commuted to transportation "upon the sea, beyond the seas," she was sent to Australia. One of the first European women to set foot on the continent, she landed in what was to become a prison colony popularly known as "Botany Bay." Mary endured two "starvation years" as the colony struggled to feed itself. Then, in 1791, she executed the most daring escape ever attempted from that wild and brutal place on the far side of the world.

How such a young, uneducated woman could have developed a plan to get herself back to England, and found the courage to implement it, is a mystery. How she persuaded eight men to accept her leadership is more mysterious yet. Her story has been told before, in history and fiction, the two generally co-mingled, as they are here. But never has the nature of this remarkable woman been so completely explored. What combination of physical endurance, psychological daring, natural intelligence, and trust in her own intuition made it possible for Mary Broom to succeed at the kind of escape that almost always ended in death for those who attempted it? And what does her story say about how much female liberation and equality have been advanced by women who never considered the concept, only its absolute necessity?

Rosa Jordan is an internationalist who explores the world physically and intellectually, always probing for the point at which political and social realities intersect with personal courage and compassion. After a decade of freelance reportage, she authored the autobiographical Dangerous Places: Travels on the Edge. Then she embarked on a series of children's books set in Florida, one of which has been made into a movie. Next she set out to cycle Cuba's 4000-km coastline, which resulted in Cycling Cuba, which she co-authored with her partner, Derek Choukalos. For Jordan, writing is the link between the edgy places she is drawn to and what she considers a truly idyllic home life in the Monashee Mountains of British Columbia. For the past decade, she has been social justice program director for Earthways Foundation, which has supported her in developing a jungle cat reserve in Ecuador's Choco rainforest and a food security program in a war-ravaged Mayan village in the Guatemala highlands.

Jordan's book, Lost Goat Lane, was nominated for the 2006-07 Chocolate Lily Award, and she was a finalist for the 2005 Silver Birch Award and the 2005 Red Maple Award.

Renovating Heaven / Andreas Schroeder
ISBN 978-088982-248-1• 204 pp • $18.95 • pb • October 2008 • A Novel in Triptych

Hilarious, bizarre and heart-breaking by turns, these three novellas of Mennonite life in Canada from the 1950s to the 1970s fill in the gap between Rudy Wiebe's Of This Earth (a generation older) and Miriam Toews' A Complicted Kindness (a generation younger).

Leaving Germany with little more than their 16th century Anabaptist faith and lifestyle to guide them, Schroeder's family settles on a small Fraser Valley farm in British Columbia and proceeds to try making sense of the perplexing mores and values of "The English" who surround them. The family finds solace, but not much else, within the local Mennonite congregation founded by Schroeder's grandfather, every single one of whose 62 members is related to Schroeder on his mother's side. In more forgiving times, these stories might have been described as entirely autobiographical. However, given today's more stringent standards — not to mention Schroeder's enthusiastic dedication to all the elements of effective storytelling (or, as his siblings would have it, "inclination to rampant lying and exaggeration") — Schroeder has raised the white flag and called these stories "novellas". That should go some distance to protecting the guilty and mollifying the innocent — if such there be.

Andreas Schroeder is the author of twenty books of poetry, fiction, nonfiction, translations, journalism and literary criticism. His books have won or been shortlisted for many awards including the Governor-General's Award, the Sealbooks First Novel Award, the Stephen Leacock Award, the Arthur Ellis Award for Best Non-Fiction and the Red Maple Award. For his literary journalism he was shortlisted for a National Magazine Award, and won the Canadian Association of Journalists' Best Investigative Journalism Award. He received an Honourary Doctorate of Letters from the University College of the Fraser Valley in 2002. He currently holds the Rogers Communications Chair in Creative Nonfiction in the University of British Columbia's Creative Writing Program. He lives in Roberts Creek on BC's Sunshine Coast with his wife, Sharon Oddie Brown.

"A brilliant saga of the dust-bedevilled thirties on the prairies; a powerful portrait of an irascible, heroic man, part prophetic genium, part damaged outcast, and his impossible, magnificent dream."
— Margaret Laurence.

" What Schroeder has accomplished is, quite simply, magical."
— Timothy Findley

Children

The Oyster Who Looked At the Sky / Darcy Dobell, illustrated by Marion Syme

ISBN 978-088982-250-4 • 32 pp • $16.95 • CL • September 2008 • Children's picture book • Ages 3 to 7

Gentle humour characterizes this story of a wilful small oyster who breaks with family tradition in order to remain true to her own adventurous nature. As she discovers the world around her, and gradually inspires her family to see it for themselves, young readers will delight in a series of playful shifts in perspective that ultimately bring the small oyster's big vision back home. Beautifully illustrated with vibrant artwork that evokes all the magic of the West Coast, this book celebrates the natural curiosity of children in a way that will inspire readers of all ages to see the everyday world as an extraordinary ground for imagination and transformation.

Darcy Dobell is the author and editor of many science books and magazine articles for children and students. Sometimes she believes she is a scientist who writes, and sometimes a writer who studies science. The Oyster Who Looked At the Sky is her first picture book. Darcy and her family live in British Columbia, dividing time between Vancouver and Lasqueti Island.

Marion Syme spent several years working with Parks Canada, creating educational material to help people understand and appreciate the natural world. She graduated from Emily Carr College of Art and has shown her art locally. When she isn't creating art she hikes and kayaks with her family in Tofino, BC. She tries to see the interconnectedness of all things. The Oyster Who Looked at the Sky is the first children's book she has illustrated.

"Marion Syme captures the essence of coastal BC in pen and ink and lively colours like no one else. Her images evoke the movement of water, the mewing of oyster catchers, and the tranquility of a dripping rainforest, all in her uniquely whimsical fashion."
— Josie Osborne, Curator, Tofino Botanical Gardens Gallery

"This story is great! I've purchased thousands of picture books during the
last 20 years and I trust my initial reaction. I like it and I'd buy it for my school and library customers."
— Maria Martella, Owner, Tinlids

Non-Fiction

Hiding Places / Timothy Brownlow

ISBN 978-088982-251-1 • 228 pp • $18.95 • pb • November 2008 • Essays

These essays are forays into what Wordsworth called the "hiding places" of the creative impulse. Sometimes in aphoristic form, this selection of meditations on the arts of poetry and teaching functions as an indirect self-portrait and probes the poet's Irish heritage.

For Brownlow, there is a fruitful tension between scholarship and poetry; too often divorced, these activities are not for him mutually exclusive. This book asserts the autonomy of the literary imagination. His aim is to be, as in Whitman's great line, "aplomb in the midst of irrational things." In a wide-ranging journey through time and space, the scholar takes note of significant historical detail, while the poet extends his range of sensation: he eats an explosive peach in Sicily; finds the inventor of the English sonnet in an English castle; lectures on the Irish writers' love of France in Voltaire's village, Ferney-Voltaire; counts great poets in Cambridge; finds Zen in John Clare; evokes the ghost of Shakespeare in rural Lancashire; remembers musical performances and readings of poetry that tuned his inner ear; walks the cliff path at Howth where Yeats had courted Maud Gonne; and finds community in classrooms while imparting this eclectic sense of taste.

"Cultural good taste is attending a banquet of the senses without overeating." The urgent needs of the poet's senses are enjoyed but kept in line by the precision of the scholar and the discipline of the teacher.

Tim Brownlow was born in Dublin, Ireland. He was co-editor of a major Irish literary journal before coming to Canada in 1970. After teaching at several universities in Nova Scotia, he taught at Malaspina University-College (now Vancouver Island University) from 1992 until he retired in 2006. He is now an Honorary Research Associate of the university. As well as scholarly publications, he has published three volumes of verse; the most recent, Climbing Croagh Patrick, was praised by W. J. Keith for its "civilised sincerity." His work appears in a number of anthologies, both scholarly and literary, including The Penguin Book of Irish Verse; The Critical Perspective; Poems for Clare; In Fine Form: The Canadian Book of Form Poetry); and Apples Under the Bed. His work is featured in the June 2007 edition of Poetry Ireland Review.

"... a peculiar sweetness of insight and a generous mind ... lines full of piercing grace ... a furious poignancy."
— Eavan Boland in Icarus

"Brownlow's Irish capacity to embrace a personal cultural tradition readily and unselfconsciously is one from which many determinedly Canadian poets could learn."
— W. J. Keith in Canadian Book Review Annual

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