A Rainbow Makes a Promiseby Marion MutalaPublished by Millennium MarketingReview by Michelle Shaw$19.99 ISBN 9781738153879 Marion Mutala really is a creative dynamo. A Rainbow Makes a Promise is her twentieth book and once again she beautifully combines poetry and music into a kaleidoscope of creativity. Saskatchewan author Mutala is perhaps best known for her national best-selling and award-winning children’s book series, Baba’s Babushka: Magical Ukrainian Adventures, which was recently collected in a beautiful 175-page illustrated limited edition hardcover. But she’s also written poetry (her second book of poetry, Race to Finish, was published in 2021), a cookbook (Baba Sophie’s Ukrainian Cookbook) and even a crime novel set in Saskatoon (The Mechanic’s Wife). In an interview a few years ago, she said, “it seems the more I write the more ideas flow.” And that really seems to be true. A Rainbow Makes a Promise celebrates the rainbow as a symbol of peace, love, and hope. Each page explodes with colour. The pictures are big and bold, and each page is bordered by a beautiful, colourful geometric Ukrainian embroidery motif. Mutala uses a variety of artwork styles throughout the book, including photos, watercolours, hand drawn illustrations and AI generated images. The words…

The Medicine Chest: A Physician’s Journey Towards Reconciliationby Jarol BoanPublished by University of Regina PressReview by Shelley A. Leedahl$29.95 ISBN 9780889779730 I was expecting an academic text when I received The Medicine Chest: A Physician’s Journey Towards Reconciliation by Regina-raised-and-returned-to physician and educator, Dr. Jarol Boan, but immediately discovered there’s nothing dull about this engaging, well-researched and important book. In fact, I flew through it. Boan, an internist who spent twenty years practising and teaching in the US, returned home in 2011—at fifty-seven—to find “Indigenous people played a different role in Saskatchewan’s affairs than they once had,” and this book documents her poignant experiences while treating Indigenous patients within Saskatchewan’s health care system from 2011 to the present. Her accounts are balanced between compelling anecdotes about patients in Regina and on reserves in the Touchwood Hills, other healthcare workers, the system (ie: fee-for-service) and politics; and medical history (ie: the TB epidemic), research and statistics. A few details about Boan’s own personal history (ie: challenging divorce and custody battle) are included, but the true focus concerns the inequities, oppression and racism inherent in the Canadian health care system. Moreover, she explains how she and a few others in the healthcare…

The Good Soldierby Nir YanivPublished by Shadowpaw PressReview by Kelli Worton$24.99 ISBN 9781989398821 People always say that you shouldn’t judge a book by its cover, but it was the cover that first drew me to The Good Soldier. An obvious mockery of war propaganda posters that boldly proclaim unstoppable military power and the imminent defeat of all enemies while also featuring images of ideal soldiers (I’m looking at you, North Korea), The Good Soldier’s cover instead shows a jubilant, chubby soldier riding a missile while holding a grinning, fluffy white dog. It’s a pretty good indication of what you’ll find inside: an absurd, yet blistering satire of military culture and war. The meaning of the dog is revealed in due course. The jubilant soldier in question is the book’s extremely unlikely hero, Pre-Private Fux (yes, really), a recent recruit to the United Planets’ Imperial Navy, stationed aboard the spacecraft UPS Spitz. He’s an idiot, second-class, a fact confirmed by the police on his home planet Bohemia IV, and noted on his ID. As he causes one incident after another on the UPS Spitz, he’s quickly labelled a menace; in the first five chapters alone, medical devices are broken, officers are…