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…