• 2008 Fall Titles

A Song For My Daughter / Patricia Jean Smith

ISBN 978-088982-244-3 • 460 pp • $22.95 • pb • April 2008 • Novel

A Song for My Daughter, set in British Columbia in 1988, is an entrancing novel about transformation, healing and the irresistible magic inherent in telling stories. Vivian, the Old Woman who narrates the story, is a trickster figure with all the powers of Raven and all the savvy of a Greek chorus. We first meet Vivian by her favourite fishing hole. With her we enjoy the taste of freshly-caught salmon cooked over an open fire, take a sip of a cold beer and listen to her stories. With Vivian as our guide, we follow the adventures of three women—Joan Dark, the mysterious and radiant Salmon Woman and daughter of Vivian; Mary Chingee, a Carrier-Sekani woman, estranged from her family; and Sally Cunningham, the spoiled daughter of wealthy Vancouver socialites. Recently released from a mental institution, this unlikely trio journeys upriver into the heartland of BC in the hope of returning Mary to her ancestral home. Along the way, they meet, amongst others, cowboys, a revivalist preacher, a woman who runs a guest ranch and an old man without a shadow. Their exploits help us to discover what it means to be female at the end of the millennium, how it feels to be a marginalised minority and what it takes to rebalance the world.

Adam Rivers, the Head Psychiatrist of the Fraserview Institute, also joins the story, first as a sympathetic advisor to the three women and then as the author of his own journal in which he records his conflicting and confused feelings. Since his first meeting with Joan, he has become obsessed by his memories of her, by the voices he has begun to hear and by her continuing appearance in his dreams. He finds himself in a state of desire and longing that is contrary to all the rules of his profession, and yet he gives in to a spell that not only lifts him out of his own loneliness but leads him to a suprising revelation.

Beautifully imagined and written, A Song For My Daughter takes us on a multilayered and celebratory journey of love and survival. Through a collision of cultures, western and First Nations, the world is righted, as it must be if we are to survive and live in harmony and peace.

Patricia Jean Smith holds an MA from the University of British Columbia in Comparative Religions. She is the author of The Golf Widow’s Revenge, a humorous book on golf, and Double Bind, a novella. She lives on Vancouver Island.

“A Song for My Daughter is a daring story of love and transformation. Patricia Jean Smith is at the top of her novelistic form. She finds, in her British Columbia landscapes, those special animal/human places where ancient mythologies coincide with the contemporary world.”
– Robert Kroetsch

A Crack In The Wall / Betty Jane Hegerat

ISBN 978-088982-240-5 • 220 pp • $18.95 • pb • April 2008 • Short stories

The characters in A Crack in the Wall share a strong sense of home, whether it is a lifelong sanctuary, or a shell as fragile as the person who inhabits it. A young kleptomaniac ventures outside the shaky walls of her self-imposed confinement. A middle-aged woman pragmatically disposes of a houseful of pets in Calgary before returning to the Maritimes to embark on the next phase of her life. An elderly woman is forced to share her room in a nursing home with an old enemy. The stories explore the vastly different ways in which people deal with blows to the foundations of their lives, with loss. In the title story, A Crack in the Wall, a perfect home fractures after the death of a child. And in another, a grieving husband finds the house haunted by ghostly messages attached to the frozen meals left behind by his dying wife. These are ordinary people, abundantly flawed, often recognizing, but still clinging to their weaknesses.

A Crack in the Wall takes the reader on a voyeuristic walk down suburban streets, a glimpse into open windows at people yearning for what was, and making their reluctant peace with what is, and what will be. Betty Jane Hegerat has been a social worker, a teacher, a writer, and a student in UBC’s creative writing program. Her short fiction has been published in Canadian literary magazines and anthologies, and broadcast on CBC radio. Her first novel, Running Toward Home, was published in 2006. She is an Alberta writer with a deep love of the landscape of that province, both urban and rural, and gratitude for the small town origin that has given her the conviction that there are no “ordinary” lives.

“Betty Jane Hegerat is a gifted and compelling storyteller. She deals in ordinary people who lead ordinary lives, but by some unobtrusive narrative magic, her people become extraordinary.”
–David Carpenter.

Jake, The Baker, Makes A Cake / P. K. Page, illustrated by Ruth Campbell

ISBN 978-088982-245-0 • 40 pp • $19.95 • cl • May 2008 • Full colour illustrations • Ages 6 and up

Jake, the Baker, Makes a Cake is a fable for children told partially in verse, and written so that it can be acted as a stage play. Jake the Baker loves Rose, the beautiful daughter of his cranky boss, Mr. Jeremiah. Mr. Jeremiah believes only in the value of money, and wants Rose to marry a rich man. When he sees Jake singing and laughing as he works, Mr. Jeremiah decides he wants to feel that way too, and offers to buy happiness from Jake. Jake is shocked, at first, and tells Mr. Jeremiah that happiness is not his to sell. But later, when Mr. Jeremiah promises Rose in marriage to the son of the town’s mayor, a very rich man, Jake is heartbroken. He decides to take Mr. Jeremiah’s money in exchange for happiness, so that he can be rich enough to marry Rose. Then, the strangest thing happens. Mr. Jeremiah is suddenly happy and carefree. Jake is miserable. Nothing goes well for him. His cakes don’t rise, he is angry all the time, and he even snaps at poor Rose when she asks him what’s wrong. Eventually, Jake realizes that he has traded away his happiness for money, and that it has cost him everything he loves. He vows to return the money to Mr. Jeremiah, who is reluctant to accept it. In the end, Mr. Jeremiah takes the money because he wants Jake to bake an award-winning cake, and Jake can only bake it if he has his happiness back. And what he cake he bakes!

Teachers and parents will be able to use this book to discuss values with children. Can happiness be bought? What happens when you trade what you love for money? Then the children can have fun acting out the play.

Iconic Canadian writer P. K. Page is also an artist who paints under the name P. K. Irwin. She is the author of more than a dozen books of poetry, travel, short stories, and children’s books. She has won numerous prizes, including the Governor General’s Prize for Poetry, has eight honorary degrees, is a Companion of the Order of Canada, a member of the Order of British Columbia and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada.

Ruth Campbell has degrees in arts and law, and is the illustrator of three previous children’s books. She lives in Vancouver with her husband, Robin.

Shirin and Salt Man / Nilofar Shidmehr

ISBN 978-088982-246-7 • 160 pp • $17.95 • pb • April 2008 • Poetic Novella

Shirin and Salt Man is a novella in verse, which tells the story of a young modern day Iranian woman, Shirin. She is an ordinary girl from Kermanshah born before the Islamic Revolution, who imagines herself to be an incarnation of princess Shirin, depicted in the ancient Persian classic Shirin and Khosro. At first she tries to shape her life to that of the myth, but later decides to change her destiny and become the author of her own story. She leaves her husband and runs away with the Salt Man, a 1700 year old mummy on display at the Iranian National Museum in Tehran. The poems form a compelling narrative of the life of a contemporary Iranian woman whose voice has been muted by Khosro, her fundamentalist and traditional husband. In an environment where the dominance of men is written in stone and where only men have the authority for fashioning and telling stories, Shirin reclaims a place for herself as a lover and teller of stories. She re-enters life through cracks of narrative to invent Shirin anew, one whose life-path radically diverges from that of her namesake, Shirin of Nezami’s story. She digs out Farhad, the mythical lover of princess Shirin, who has now become the Salt Man, from under the dust and stones of history and she gives him another opportunity to love her. In transforming Salt Man to another Farhad, Shirin creates a new history—one shaped and narrated by a feminine voice.

Nilofar Shidmehr was born and raised in Iran, and has lived in Canada since 1997. She holds an MFA degree in creative writing from the University of British Columbia and is currently working on her PhD at the Center for Cross Faculty Inquiry in Education. Her work has been featured in both Iranian and Canadian literary magazines, including Descant, A Room of One's Own, West Coast Line, Galleon, and the Shahrvand, a widely-read Iranian newspaper published in Toronto and Vancouver.

The House Of The Easily Amused / Shelley A. Leedahl

ISBN 978-088982-239-9 • 128 pp • $17.95 • pb • April 2008 • Poetry

Where is home? What, and who, constitutes family? Why does one sometimes feel more at home when away? With the poet’s sensibility and the pilgrim’s resolve, Leedahl’s complementary evocations of disparate people and landscapes—both faraway and familiar—put traditional concepts to the test.

In poems that brim with wonder and all manners of awe, the natural world serves as touchstone wherever the poet roams. Mexico offers phosphorescent words in the sand’s wet skin; there’s snow-light and a drawbridge of stillness before an elk charges in Banff; squirrels in Saskatchewan make intermittent appearances as if they’re extras on a movie set; there’s no one minding the greenhouse in Scotland, where the grapes have gone wonderfully mad; and in Ireland, a battered heart still gives a little kick over red, mouse-nibbled mushrooms. You won’t find the “house” from the book’s title on any particular map. Its metaphoric doors open into rooms of both love and lament, as they must, and the “easily amused” are all those who follow the faint hope of deer trails, wear mismatched socks, or rejoice in the sky’s infinite game of Lite-Brite. You know, they’re those fortunate souls who venture outside the fence of their lives, and leave the blue gate swinging.

Shelley A. Leedahl is the author of two novels, two short story collections, two previous books of poetry, and an illustrated children’s book. She has been awarded the John V. Hicks Manuscript Award, a Short Grain Award, Foreword Magazine’s “Book of the Year”, and more than a dozen Saskatchewan Writers Guild awards in various genres, including literary non-fiction. Two of her titles have been shortlisted for “Book of the Year” (Saskatchewan Book Awards). As well, she was one of five Canadian writers selected for the Canada-Mexico Writing/Photography Exchange in Mérida (Mexico) and Banff. She lives in the village of Middle Lake, Saskatchewan.

“Amidst the banality of suburban life, the ordinariness of domesticity, [Leedahl] grounds a fierce love of beauty, of the moment’s transcendence, of the lonely soul making its peace with the world. She’s not saying, Look at me, she’s saying, Look at this. Out of love, and care for the reader, as evidenced by her careful craft and camera eye, her poems show us a way to see, and an admirable way to be in the world.”

—John Donlan, Author
of Green Man, Baysville, and Domestic Economy.

Elf the Eagle /Ron Smith; Illustrated by Ruth Campbell

Finalist for the Christie Harris Illustrated Children's Literature Prize, BC Book Prizes 2008

ISBN 0-88982-241-7 • ISBN13 978-088982-241-2 • 40 pp $19.95 • cl • October 2007 • Full colour illustrations
• Ages 5 to 8

Elf The Eagle Study Guide

This delightful book tells the story of Elf, a baby eagle who worries about many things, including the distance from his nest, high up in a tree, to the ground, way, way down below. He also worries about his sister, Edwina, who is older and more adventurous than he is, and who spreads her wings and flies out of their nest, which frightens Elf a great deal. Eventually, when his baby down grows into strong, black feathers, Elf ’s parents stop bringing him food, and tempt him with tasty morsels that they keep just out of reach. Elf gets very hungry and one day he accidentally tumbles out of his nest. As he starts to fall, his parents yell at him to flap his wings. He does, and he is flying! At the story’s end, Elf can’t wait for dawn to break so he can fly all the way to the sun.

With beautiful, full-colour illustrations by Vancouver artist Ruth Campbell, Elf is an inspiring story, told with gentle humour. It will delight children, who will relate to Elf ’s fears and will realize, as he does, that they too will grow into their wings and fly, when the time is right.

Ron Smith lives on Vancouver Island in a house by the sea, where eagles soar and nest in the trees near his home. He is the author of three collections of poetry and a book of short stories. He is the founder and publisher of Oolichan Books. Elf the Eagle is his first book for children.

Ruth Campbell is a painter born and raised in Montreal. She has degrees in arts and law, and is also a graduate of the Emily Carr Institute of Art & Design. She lives in Vancouver with her husband, Robin, and their small family of four cats and two dogs. She is the illustrator of Words, a children’s picture book.

“With wide eyes, lopsided wings, and unsteady feet, Elf the baby eagle hesitates at the edge of the world. He doesn’t know yet what his parents and sister are trying to teach him: that he belongs to the air, and the air to him. Perhaps you know someone like this? You’ll love this delightful tale. Join Elf as he learns to fly. Fly with him as he grows beyond fear and discovers joy.”
— W. H. New

For more information on eagles, please visit the following websites:

• Fraser Valley Bald Eagle Festival
• American Bald Eagle Information
• American Eagle Foundation

Other Oolichan titles by Ron Smith:

• What Men Know About Women $17.95 pb • $27.95 hc
• Enchantment & Other Demons $12.95

• 2007 Fall Titles
• Oolichan's 2006 titles