Wounded Hearts Take a Chanceby Debbie QuigleyPublished by Endless Sky BooksReview by Shelley A. Leedahl$9.99 ISBN 9781989398722 Wounded Hearts Take A Chance is an attractive book with a positive message: women can recover from intense heartbreak and love again. Written by Debbie Quigley, a “retired healthcare worker” who writes “simple and real” poetry in what she calls her “whisper-art form,” this 28-page softcover is a poetic self-help read for those “whose wounded hearts have been shattered into pieces, those who are afraid to take a chance on loving another man”. Across pages topped with light floral graphics, Quigley unfolds the narrative of a woman who has been “Keeping walls around her heart” and “Drying her own tears,” but, she writes, “Gazing at the stars at night” and “Holding a warm hand” are what “We all want,” and she encourages the reader to “Let someone in [their] life!”. The thirteen free verse poems are ordered chronologically as a new relationship blossoms, beginning with a “first-glance attraction” that results in a dinner date. After this, “Exhilarated excitement enters her focus/Words of trust being built/Each word a brick of trust/Bringing her to the point of slowly tearing down the walls/around her heart”. Once…

Neighbours Helping Neighbours: The Story of Good Neighbours Food Centreby Wilmer FroesePublished by Your Nickel’s Worth PublishingReview by Toby A. Welch$24.95 ISBN 9781778690150  I love books that started out as a passion project as the author’s enthusiasm shows through in the words. That is clearly the case with Neighbours Helping Neighbours. In a world filled with negativity and news channels that promote doom and gloom, Neighbours Helping Neighbours is a breath of sunshine. It gave me long-term warm fuzzies. The story of the Good Neighbours Food Centre reaffirmed to me that there is still so much good in this world. People who care are out there.  This book shares an inspiring success story that took place in Rosthern, a small town located halfway between Saskatoon and Prince Albert, Saskatchewan. The community banded together to create a food bank for people who lived with food insecurity. The author, Wilmer Froese, shared the initial planning of the food bank with two other community-minded people. Their vision statement was simple: to give food to people who need it. They opened in September 2011, operating one day a week at the local senior centre before upgrading to a standalone building. They faced some huge obstacles over the following years…

Backwater Mystic Bluesby Lloyd RatzlaffShadowpaw Press RepriseReview by Shelley A. Leedahl$18.99 ISBN 9781989398609 I somehow missed Backwater Mystic Blues—the contemplative collection of essays by Saskatoon’s Lloyd Ratzlaff—when it was first published in 2006. Shame on me, for I greatly admired Ratzlaff’s earlier book, The Crow Who Tampered With Time, and bought several copies. And shame on me, as—disclaimer—I call this gracious writer a friend. Fortunately, fate’s found a way to deliver Ratzlaff’s second essay collection into my hands these many years later, and like a song you’ve not heard in a long time but, upon listening again, remember how much you enjoyed, I’m so pleased to hear the distinguished yet down-home voice of my old Mennonite friend—a former minister, counsellor and educator—once again. Backwater Mystic Blues has been reborn with Shadowpaw Press Reprise, a press that publishes “New editions of notable, previously published books”. Hurray, that. These cultivated essays are reminiscences of a life lived with intention, but also with abundant questioning (particularly spiritual) and grief (the dissolution of a marriage, career dissatisfaction, deaths). What you’ll also find here is gentleness, nature keenly observed, scholarship, and page-by-page evidence of a human who walks through this world with a generous heart….

Daughter of Earth: Book Four of the Leather Book Talesby Regine HaenselPublished by Serimuse BooksReview by Toby A. Welch$14.95 ISBN 9780993903236 Fantasy books are so hit and miss for me. I either love or hate the world that the author created and I am thrust into. In the case of Daughter of Earth, I love where author Haensel’s creativity took her. The world that revolves around Alizarine and Samel kept me sucked in, eager to keep flipping the pages. As the title points out, this is book four in The Leather Book Tales set. The author best explains this book collection: “The Leather Book Tales is a fantasy set in western North America. Four powers – fire, water, air, and earth – reveal themselves in four young people, triggered and enhanced by a pair of silver bracelets. The young people’s abilities increase as they overcome challenges and collaborate against forces that oppose and threaten them. The Leather Book holds old and tangled tales that connect with what is happening to them, but the stories don’t reveal all that is behind the events. The young people face risks, not only for themselves but also for the world and its people.” A huge bonus…

The Ghosts of Spiritwoodby Martine Noël-MawPublished by Shadowpaw Press RepriseReview by Shelley A. Leedahl$17.99 ISBN 9781989398623 I’ve always loved a good ghost story, and Saskatchewan writer Martine Noël-Maw gives us ghost stories inside a ghost story in her YA novel The Ghosts of Spiritwood. First published in 2010 in French, the book’s now available in English thanks to Shadowpaw Press Reprise, and I’m so pleased. The novel was inspired by Grade 8 French Immersion students at Elsie Mironuck School in Regina, where Noël-Maw conducted six writing workshops. The author’s work’s been recognized with two Saskatchewan Book Awards, and she clearly knows how to write well, beginning with this novel’s opening paragraph: “I still have nightmares about the events that took place in that abandoned country school near Spiritwood. I’d seen disembodied spirits before but never like those.” That’s a grabber. We immediately learn that our First Person narrator is seventeen-year-old Ethan, the son of a Regina psychologist. Ethan and his classmates were to go camping in Spiritwood where they’d “watch the northern lights,” but rather than taking the bus with the others, Ethan and twins John and Reggie, plus Ethan’s crush Alex(andra) and whiny Britney had to leave the city…

Saskatchewan Dirt: A Pandemic Quest for Connectionby Bev LundahlPublished by Your Nickel’s Worth PublishingReview by Toby A. Welch$24.95 ISBN 9781778690129 We all know you should never judge a book by its cover, but I made that mistake initially with Saskatchewan Dirt. Based on the title, I assumed this book would be about a farmer’s search for ways to connect with others during the height of Covid. Wrong! It’s a “genealogical and geographical pursuit of the early connections between settlers and Indigenous people in southeast Saskatchewan.” This book unfolds in a creative way. Basically, the author and her road trip sidekick, Georgina, hit the highways and back roads of Saskatchewan to uncover the history of the settlers and Indigenous people of that region. (I loved that they spent plenty of time in the Estevan area, my stomping grounds.) Between and after the two road trips they took, the research continued via Zoom meetings and deep dives into the Internet. The details Lundahl unearthed add to the depths of this work. In addition to the genealogical aspects, the residential schools atrocity takes up a portion of the book. (She even touches on Pope Francis’s apology in 2022 for the Catholic church’s role in the history…

Small Reckoningsby Karin Melberg SchwierPublished by Shadowpaw Press RepriseReview by Shelley A. Leedahl$24.99 ISBN 9781989398746 Sometimes a book is so phenomenal it goes into multiple printings, either with the original publisher or with a fresh publisher. Such is the case with Saskatoon author Karin Melberg Schwier’s Small Reckonings, a Watrous, SK-based novel set between 1914 and 1936, and inspired by true events. I reviewed this book—for which the writer received a John V. Hicks Long Manuscript Award for Fiction—when it was first published by Burton House Books in 2020. A revised edition came out in 2021 with Copestone, and that same year it earned a Saskatchewan Book Award. This year, Shadowpaw Press Reprise has released the third edition. This story’s got staying power. I stand by what I claimed in my initial review: Small Reckonings deserves a huge audience. Kudos to the multi-genre writer, and to Regina publisher (and writer) Edward Willett for recognizing that many well-written books deserve another chance to shine. Excerpts of my earlier review of this beautifully-crafted and highly enjoyable novel also get a reprise: Melberg Schwier expertly creates individuated characters readers will care deeply about, including the central figure, Violet, who, at birth, looks like…

The Life Sentences of Rik McWhinneyby Rik McWhinneyPublished by University of Regina PressReview by Toby A. Welch$24.95 ISBN 9780889778979 When I review a book, I allot myself two weeks to read it. That way I don’t feel pressure when life throws curve balls my way, like it inevitably does to all of us. Two weeks wasn’t necessary with this book – I devoured it in one day. The content was so engrossing that it sucked me right in. I couldn’t let go until I’d turned the last page.  In brief, The Life Sentences of Rik McWhinney is about the torment that one man went through while in Canadian penitentiaries. Rik McWhinney spent over 34 years in prisons across the country, 16 of those in solitary confinement. He was granted parole in 2007 and struggled to adjust to a world so drastically different from what he had known for decades. Sadly, McWhinney passed away in January 2019 but we are fortunate to have his experiences live on in The Life Sentences of Rik McWhinney.  Most of my knowledge about penitentiary life came from TV and movies. How clueless I was! Being a prisoner in Canada is nothing like what you see on the screen. It is…