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Eastword, November-December 2005imPRESSed!: The newest titles by WFNS members A Forest for Calum explores complex lives of rural communities in the post-war, post-heavy industry decades of the mid-twentieth century. It does so with dignity and humour. The setting is Cape Breton; the themes of cultural and rural change and decline are universal. Frank Macdonald, long-time and award-winning columnist and publisher of The Inverness Oran, is an accomplished writer of short stories, drama, poetry and songs. His humorous, often satirical, columns have twice been anthologized: How to Cook Your Cat in 2003, and Assuming I’m Right in 1990, which also became a stage production that has toured Nova Scotia and elsewhere in Canada. He lives in Inverness, Cape Breton. This is his first novel.
Six months after the attacks of September 11, 2001, Steven Laffoley stood at the edge of Ground Zero in New York City. Having emigrated from the United States to Canada 20 years earlier, he had travelled to New York in an effort to find meaning in the terrible event. However, he found the absence of meaning. In the months that followed he watched as the American government created its own meaning for the event and used it to usher in a new age – The Age of Unreason. As he wrote and published his thoughts on this new Dark Age, he began an unexpected journey: a journey to understand his own relationship to America and to Canada. He asked, “What is it to be an American-Canadian in this Age of Unreason?” Born near Boston, Steven Laffoley moved to Nova Scotia in 1982 where he’s worked as a curriculum writer, a university professor, and a school principal. As a freelance writer, columnist and broadcaster, Steven has written for more than 40 print and online magazines and newspapers. He lives with his family in Halifax.
This handbook is for homeowners, to assist them in understanding who the major players are in the construction industry, as well as for employers and employees who work in the industry itself. It is meant to assist everyone who is in commercial or residential construction in gaining a better appreciation of their responsibilities in occupational health and safety. It explains how these factors have an impact on the construction process itself and on the process of hiring someone to work on a homeowner’s property. The information in Protection in a Handbook was gleaned from David Dahr’s many years of experience in the construction industry --and he is still learning. He has been a carpenter for thirty years.
Nova Scotia, 1942: Izzie and her family have been living a new kind of life in the town of Woodside. Her mother has a job on the assembly line at the sugar refinery, and Izzie and her brother, Joey, have found new friends. Still, with Izzie’s father in the navy, it’s impossible for the family not to worry about him when they see explosions in the night just beyond Halifax Harbour or when they hear news of the sinking of another ship. But, as Izzie discovers, even when she and her family return for the summer to Granite Cove, there is no escaping the reality of war. Since publishing her first book in 1984, Budge Wilson has published over 29 books, with translations in 10 languages and in 13 countries. She has also won many awards: 19 Canadian Children's Book Centre "Our Choice" awards, First Prize in the CBC Literary Competition, a City of Dartmouth Book Award, a Canadian Library Association Young Adult Book Award, a Marianna Dempster Award, and an Ann Connor Brimer Award. She lives and writes in a fishing village on the South Shore
In Margaret Laurence: The Making of a Writer, author and scholar Donez Xiques writes in detail about the very important years Laurence spent with her husband and children in Somalia and Ghana. The adventures of the young Margaret Laurence are uncovered while her literary growth is traced through interviews with teachers, classmates, neighbours, and professional associates. Appended to this powerful new biography is a short story by Margaret Laurence that has never before been published and two other stories that have not been widely available. Donez Xiques has always had a keen interest in Canadian literature and was awarded a Fulbright Fellowship for research in Canada, 1991-2. She also received Canadian Embassy Faculty Enrichment Awards in 1982 and 1990. She is currently Associate Professor of English at Brooklyn College, City University of New York, specializing in nineteenth-century American fiction.
Nova Scotia is a birder’s paradise—the trick is knowing where to go to catch sight of the dainty piping plover, stately blue heron, or cheeky blue jay. This problem is solved within the pages of this invaluable guidebook, which divides Nova Scotia by county, pinpointing the best birding sites, how to reach them, and on-site orientation. Complete with maps and chockfull of useful information such as special birds to see, species of note, and key details for each site (i.e. amenities, points of interest, and habitats), this guidebook is sure to delight the bird fancier in your life, or be a welcome addition to your own feathered pursuits! Blake Maybank is a self-employed, well-traveled writer, editor, speaker, photographer, naturalist, and musician. He wrote The National Parks and Other Wild Places of Canada. He also wrote the Halifax Herald's nature column, and is the editor of Nova Scotia Birds.
Back Talk is a collection of plays by the Nova Scotia playwright, Louise Delisle. These plays reflect the history of slavery as well as contemporary Black experience. “She speaks the kind of voice our community has always possessed. She’s a nat’chal writer, one who sets down in black ink the brilliant indigo of our speech and the blazing sepia of our history.” From the Foreword, by George Elliott Clarke. Louise Delisle lives in Shelburne County, Nova Scotia. Beginning with the Mi'kmaq people who relied on the woods for game and useful products, Green Horizons then traces the history of the forests in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries when the ethic of "cut and run" ran rampant, destroying huge numbers of trees as did massive forest fires. The story moves on to the time of saw millers who "took the best and left the rest." Green Horizons also recounts the history of the past 50 years in Nova Scotia's forests through interviews with those directly involved in forestry. Born in Liverpool, England, in 1929, Jim Lotz has held 25 different jobs, ranging from grouse beater in the Scottish Highlands to glacial meteorologist in the Arctic. Since 1960, he has been actively engaged in community-based development and has taught at the Coady International Institute. His travels in search of learning have taken him from Alaska to Slovakia and from the High Arctic to Lesotho. He has written 20 books.
Quests and Kingdoms provides a basis from which an adult unfamiliar with the genre of children's fantasy literature may explore it. Taking a chronological approach, Quests begins with the fairy-tale collections of d'Aulnoy, Perrault, and the Grimms and works its way up to the novels of J.K. Rowling and Garth Nix, covering over three centuries of fantasy read by children. The lives of the authors are looked at and placed in historical context, while their works are introduced through both synopses and analysis. Originally from Kingston, Ont., K.V. Johansen studied English and History at Mount Allison, received a Master's in Medieval Studies from the Centre for Medieval Studies at the University of Toronto, and another Master's, in English, from McMaster. She held the 2001 Eileen Wallace Research Fellowship in Children's Literature from the Eileen Wallace Collection at UNB to work on a book on the history of children's fantasy literature, and received the 2004 Frances E. Russell Award for research in children's literature from IBBY Canada. She currently lives in Sackville, NB.
A Ship Portrait is a tribute to the life and art of John O’Brien,
nineteenth-century painter of ships, written in what Harry Thurston calls
"a novella in verse." Built upon two voices, O’Brien’s
and the poet’s, the poem traces the painter’s life in Halifax
during the apex and decline of the Golden Age of Sail. Thurston characterizes
this era in Nova Scotia’s history as a time of shifting mythologies,
of strife between Old World and New, and of a surprisingly cosmopolitan
lifestyle sustained by the shipping industry.
Monkeys in a Looking Glass contains themes familiar the world over – love, loss, life and death. Curtis draws upon his travels to give readers a portrait of the young Che Guevera in love for the first time and to describe the fear and exhilaration of Pamplona’s “running of the bulls.” At the same time, he applies his discerning eye to things much closer to home: a man searching for his family roots in the goldfields of the Yukon; an ex-convinct looking for love at a singles’ dance; a young family chasing a dream in rural New Brunswick. Wayne Curtis started writing prose in the late sixties. He has been a contributor to several newspapers, including The National Post and The Globe and Mail, as well as commercial magazines. Wayne’s stories have appeared in literary journals and in the Atlantic anthology, Atlantica. His short stories have been dramatized on CBC radio and for CBC television. In 2005, Wayne was given an Honourary Doctorate (of letters) Degree from St.Thomas University. He lives in Fredericton, New Brunswick.
In Maclean, Allan Donaldson depicts the tragedy of a human life
oppressed by the residual nightmare of war, as well as the limitations
of small-town life in New Brunswick in the mid-1900s. Allan Donaldson is also the author of Paradise Sliding (Goose Lane).
He was born in Taber, Alberta, but grew up in Woodstock, New Brunswick.
He currently lives in Fredericton.
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©WFNS
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A
Forest for Calum
Mr.
Bush, Angus and Me
Protection
in a Handbook
Izzie:
Patricia’s Secret
Margaret
Laurence: The Making of a Writer
Birding
Sites of Nova Scotia
Back
Talk: Plays of Black Experience 
Green
Horizons: The Forests and Foresters of Nova Scotia
Quests
and Kingdoms: A Grown-Up’s Guide to Children’s Fantasy Literature
A
Ship Portrait
Monkeys
in a Looking Glass
Maclean