Homegrown literary works a must-have this season

BY WENDY ELLIOTT

welliott@kentvilleadvertiser.ca

NovaNewsNow.com

Ace reader Wendy Elliott has been running to fall book launches and plowing through new books homegrown by Maritime authors. It has been well worth burning the midnight oil.

This is the biggest season for regional booksellers and here is a smattering of what is available on bookstore shelves this month.

Reliving the Acadian Expulsion

Ann McKinnon Davidson grew up in Port Williams and she says when her Grade 6 teacher, Sherman Williams, taught the story of the Acadians, it stuck. “It stayed with me through the years. He knows a great deal about Horton Landing and the Evangeline Beach area and he could talk about the marshlands and why they were so fertile.”

After graduating from Acadia University, Davidson did graduate work in social services. She moved to Massachusetts in 1983 and, over the years, “developed a strong desire to write a compelling story about the Acadian/Cajun connection.”

Davidson found a writing partner in Terry Thibodeaux, was born into a large Cajun family in southwest Louisiana. The two have never met.

They connected through a website on the recommendation of a friend who knew Davidson was looking for someone knowledgeable.

Thibodeaux is a humanities professor at a state university in Texas. His son, Mark, designed the award-winning cover of Davidson’s book, Catherine’s Cadeau.

Their modern Cajun heroine, Monique LeBlanc, disappears from the memorial park at Grand-Pre and readers are launched into 1755. Monique’s family knew she wanted to honour her late mother’s dream of visiting their Canadian homeland, but they don’t know where she is.

Monique finds herself at her ancestors' exile, actually living through the horrific deportation of thousands of Acadians. Readers follow her into exile when she spends the winter of 1755-56 in Boston as the Acadian refugees struggle to stay alive.

The plot swings back and forth from past to present. In the modern era, her family and friends try frantically to find Monique, galvanizing an extensive search with the help of the local police.

Davidson says, as a transplanted Canadian, her interest developed in this piece of shared history. Meanwhile, Thibodeaux was motivated as a descendent of the Acadian hero Joseph Broussard.

According to Davidson, the grand derangement is an unhappy piece of colonial history and she thinks the novel might make some people feel regret about the way the New England military handled the deportation.

Neither writer planned to create a scholarly look at the expulsion of 11,000 peaceful farmers and their families. Catherine’s Cadeau is a very accessible piece of historical fiction that brings a heartrending episode to life. It actually has a happy ending.

Catherine's Cadeau was published by Texas A&M University Press Consortium.

Acadian Star

Acadian writer Hélène Boudreau has just published another time travel story, Acadian Star, that starts in a small Cape Breton town.

This novel, designed for middle readers, introduces contemporary Acadian characters and offers a young girl’s perspective on the history of the Acadian Deportation.

A native of Isle Madame, Boudreau writes fiction and non-fiction for children and young adults from her home in Ontario. Her writing has appeared in various Canadian publications and her Maritime-themed art has been exhibited by the Toronto Public Library. This is her debut novel and it was published by Nimbus.

A Maritime Christmas

The magic of Christmas is always felt strongly in the Maritimes. A new collection of yuletide stories is a mixture of true seasonal remembrances and fictional imaginings of the holiday season.

Contributions came from over 20 Maritime writers and touch on traditions, reunions with family and friends, the humour, and sometimes, the hardships. Some of the collection’s contributions are familiar, many are heartwarming, but every story shares the same spirit of the season.

This yuletide collection includes many well-known writers such as Harry Thurston, Steve Vernon, and David Goss. Folklorist Clary Croft wrote the introduction. Published by Nimbus, this book sells for $15.95.

Book of Musts

From the Cabot Trail in October to rafting the highest tides to drinking beer and looking in on Annapolis Royal, one of the most interesting townscapes in North America, there are many ‘must-sees’ on the list every Nova Scotian must have.

Valley writer Allan Lynch has compiled a broad collection, from waterfalls you can literally enjoy by yourself to the hidden pleasures of a county fair. 
Best of all, he also gets well-known and not-so-well-known Bluenosers from across the province to weigh in with their must lists. They include singer-songwriter Jimmy Rankin, Clearwater CEO John Risley, the Trailer Park Boys’ Jonathan Torrens and writer Frank Macdonald.

This is his fourth book. Locally, he recommends Windsor’s pumpkin regatta and hockey heritage centre, eating in Wolfville, lobster at Hall’s Harbour and a visit to Annapolis Royal.

Lynch, who says he lives in New Minas-by-the malls, has a long history as a travel writer in far-flung places. Now he is sharing his favourite haunts in his home province.

Published by MacIntyre Purcell Publishing in Lunenburg, The Nova Scotia Book of Musts sells for $13.95.

From Poverty to Power

Most of us feel overwhelmed when we contemplate the masses of people across the planet who are suffering from poverty. Just a tenth of the cost of the Iraq war would lift everyone on the planet above the extreme poverty line.

Mark Fried, who spoke in Wolfville at the launch of Oxfam International’s new book, From Poverty to Power, pointed out how ordinary people through organized action can help eliminate poverty and its related challenges of inequality and environmental collapse.

Fried is the advocacy coordinator for Oxfam Canada and a literary translator. He writes regularly on policy issues related to international development and works in Ottawa as a lobbyist.

Ending the scourges of extreme poverty, inequality and threatened environmental collapse is the greatest global challenge of the 21st century and the focus of the book author Duncan Green intends as a university text.

The income of the world’s 500 richest billionaires exceeds that of its poorest 416 million people, so it is no wonder that poor communities around the world are increasingly paying the price for climate change that is largely caused by the carbon emissions of rich countries.

Even within countries the inequalities are grotesque, Fried told his audience. Children born into the poorest 20 per cent of households in Ghana or Senegal are two to three times more likely to die before the age of five than children born into the richest 20 per cent of households in these countries.

From Poverty to Power sets out a vision of women and men in communities who are in charge of their own destinies. What is required to achieve is nothing less than a global new deal.

Oxfam’s experience in more than 100 countries around the world, Fried said, shows the redistribution of wealth can best be accomplished through a combination of active citizens and effective nation states.

The extraordinary transformations of countries such as China, Vietnam, South Korea, Taiwan, Botswana or Mauritius have been based on states that ensure health and education for all, and which actively manage the process of economic growth and transformation.

Living in poverty is characterized as much by anxiety as by low income, Fried noted. Poor people are more vulnerable than richer people, whether to personal disasters such as sickness or job loss, or at a community level, to weather events, earthquakes, or outbreaks of conflict.

From Poverty to Power sells for $29.99.

Women behind famous men

Beginning with several Lucys who made a difference ¬¬– saint, suffragette, author, artist, comedienne, cartoon character, mother, muse ¬– Wolfville poet Wanda Campbell takes her readers on a poetic journey.

Always a visual writer, Campbell’s wonderful new collection, Looking for Lucy, her fourth book, demonstrates a lively intellect at work, says Dr. Patricia Rigg, who introduced her last week.

At the book launch, Campbell treated her ample audience to slides that illustrated her heroines. She continued with history and the unlikely love story between Lucy Adaline Hurd and William Cornelius Van Horne.

He was the man responsible for building the railroad that joined Canada from east to west. As he drove his iron dreams across lakeshore and forest, prairie and mountain, she stayed behind in Montreal, knowing that her passions – children, music, orchids – would not endure.

At the driving of the last spike Nov. 7, 1885, at Craigellachie, B.C., Van Horne pronounced "the work has been done well in every way," but these poems take a closer look at that classic Canadian photographs.

The final section of Looking for Lucy draws upon letters, newspaper articles and obituaries to reveal what ultimately happened to Addie and the picturesque Canadian places she called home. Using a variety of forms including free verse and found poems, sonnets and sestinas, Campbell’s new collection explores the lives of women who inhabit the margins of history and the ways in which they shine. It is a fascinating compendium and one to recommend.