The Anatomy of Edouard Beaupré: A Story by Sarah Kathryn York Published by Coteau Books Review by Keith Foster $16.95 ISBN 13:978155050774 Reading The Anatomy of Edouard Beaupré is like venturing into The Twilight Zone. The novel is so well researched and written that it’s hard to tell where facts leave off and fiction begins. Beaupré, the eldest of 20 children, was indeed real. Author Sarah Kathryn York adds further realism to her novel by introducing actual historical characters such as Canadian strongman Louis Cyr. It was impossible for Beaupré to remain inconspicuous. Known as the Willow Bunch Giant, standing at eight feet, three inches, he stood out like a redwood tree in a wheat field. He was still growing when he died at age 23. His size made him an object of ridicule and exploitation throughout his short life. Even in death, he was not free from abuse. His corpse went on public display in a store window in St. Louis, Missouri, and again as an exhibit at the University of Montreal. York revels in imagery, saying that “rags of clouds scrubbed the sky.” A master of metaphor and simile, she peppers her story with literary devices. She describes…

Herstory 2013: The Canadian Women’s Calendar by The Saskatoon Women’s Calendar Collective Published by Coteau Books Review by Keith Foster $15.95 ISBN 9781550504798 Herstory 2013, like previous editions of Herstory, is a celebration of Canadian women who were, for the most part, ordinary women who attained greatness by their extraordinary achievements. The book follows a basic format – a photo and either a brief life story or special feature of some three dozen Canadian women. Through a one-page thumbnail sketch, the reader can almost feel that he or she has met that woman and come to know her. Every second page contains a seven-day calendar for 2013, with a nifty quotation on the bottom. These women have pursued a variety of vocations, such as actor, physician, artist, musician, dancer, nurse, educator, scientist, bookseller, pilot, taxidermist, mountain climber, and activist. One woman who acted in an exemplary way is Molly Reilly. She distinguished herself with her superb flying ability as an aerial photographer during World War II. She once landed a plane that was trailing smoke from its burning engine. Witnesses expected to see a panic-stricken pilot leap from the plane. Instead, she calmly climbed out and, sauntering up to a…

The Piper of Shadonia by Linda Smith Published by Coteau Books Review by Tavish Bell $14.95 ISBN 9781550505160 The Piper of Shadonia by Linda Smith is an excellent book for teenage readers who like adventure and fiction. When I first got this book, I was dubious. “I’m supposed to read a book about songs and music?” I wasn’t sure if I’d like it, since I prefer books laden with adventure. I was wrong. The Piper of Shadonia is about a boy who gets a pipe with magical powers. It starts out amazing and ends with tons of fun. Linda Smith’s story is good all the way through and hooks you on the very first page. You will never get bored of this book. In fact, you won’t want to put it down. Ever. The Piper of Shadonia has a wonderful storyline and Linda Smith has a great, engaging writing style. The characters are very interesting; each one is unique. The book presents an interesting way of looking at things. I found that when I read it for the first time, the message seemed to be “you don’t have to be a big, buff, tough, warrior to be powerful.” That message…

A Book of Great Worth by Dave Margoshes Published by Coteau Books Review by Michelle Shaw $18.95 ISBN 9 781550 504767 On the surface, award-winning Saskatchewan-based author Dave Margoshes’s latest offering is a beautifully written collection of biographical stories about his father’s life. Except that the stories are fiction. Although based, says Margoshes, on “a seed of truth” and imbued with “the persona and personality of [my] father”, they are all fiction. The result is a selection of carefully crafted tales, written over a number of years, which relate various incidents in his father’s life. Margoshes says he “worked hard, with the stories’ structure and a sort of old-fashioned expository style, to make them feel like memoir — like truth…[he] also worked hard to imbue these stories with a tension created by that unstated question of how the narrator came to know not just the stories, in their broad strokes, but the fine details.” He succeeded. At first I was consciously trying to work out what was true but I soon found myself enveloped in the stories. Most of the book is set in New York City in the early decades of the twentieth century. Margoshes crafts an almost sensory…

The Veil Weavers by Maureen Bush Published by Coteau Books for Kids Review by Brinnameade Smith $7.95 ISBN 1 3-978-1-55050-482-8 The Veil of Magic series, by Maureen Bush, is a great, accessible series for young fantasy readers who are ready to start reading chapter books and novels. It’s set in Calgary and the Canadian Rockies where readers are given a chance to learn about and appreciate the nature all around them as they follow along on a fantastical story about friendship, responsibility and bravery. The Veil Weavers is the third book in the series. It follows a brother and sister called Josh and Maddy as they race to save a magical world that has been damaged by the misuse of power and magic. While much of this damage has been caused by the evil villain, Gronvald the troll, Josh and Maddy’s friends have unknowingly contributed as well. When the damage is discovered everyone is able to learn about actions, consequences and problem solving. The book easily talks about problems like global warming, environmental concern and animal rights in a simple way that kids can understand. Many of the warm and bright friends made by Josh and Maddy are animals that…

A Woman Clothed in Words by Anne Szumigalski Published by Coteau Books Review by Kris Brandhagen $16.95 CAD 978155050478 The name Anne Szumigalski has long been ubiquitous in Saskatchewan’s writing community. According to A Woman Clothed in Words editor Mark Abley, “[t]he depth and breadth of her involvement in the Saskatchewan literary community are hard to overestimate. Anne was a founding member of the Saskatchewan Writers Guild, a founding editor of Grain, and the first writer-in-residence at the Saskatoon Public Library”. She was a complex writer, who refused to be nailed down to a specific poetics, by herself, by anyone else, or even by her poems, preferring to always push boundaries, in terms of writing in all genres, and writing in-between genres, as well as collaborating with all sorts of other arts media and professionals. It is noted by Abley that, “the interplay between language and the female body shapes much of her work.” We find out where the title of this book comes from in an excerpt from the “Thin Pale Man”: …here’s the river again and the ice and Anna giving herself to love all garments fall from her but the garment of words and what could be…

We Want You to Know :Kids Talk About Bullying by Deborah Ellis Published by Coteau Books Review by Donna Gudjonson $14.95 ISBN 978-1-55050-463-7 All of us have experienced some form of bullying at some time in our lives. Recently this problem has come under the spotlight with cyber-bullying being blamed for several suicides of young people. Internationally acclaimed author Deborah Ellis has compiled the stories of students between the ages of nine and nineteen and gives an in-depth insight into this problem. The stories are candid and give voice to what is really happening in schools to our kids. Each story describes the experience of the person being bullied, how they felt, and what they did to cope. At the end of each story there are discussion questions to promote awareness and empathy. As I read the stories I was drawn back to my own childhood memories of being bullied and excluded by my cousin. We were close in age and in the same grade all through school in a small town. On many occasions she coerced the other girls to shun me. When I finally talked to my mother about it she helped me to find a solution. I…

A Large Harmonium by Sue Sorensen Published by Coteau Books Review by Michelle Shaw $19.95 ISBN 9781550504606 Sue Sorensen’s debut novel introduces us to forty-two year old English lecturer Janey as she navigates her way through life as a mother, wife and academic. Janey, aka Dr Janet Erlicksen, is deeply in love with her music lecturer husband, the sexy Hector, and frequently bewildered by her adored toddler, the strong-willed Little Max. Although she’s fairly proficient at juggling the demands of the academic year, less academic pursuits have a disconcerting habit of distracting her, such as the urge to write a murder mystery with her mother-in-law as the victim when she should instead be deciding on a viable research topic. Sorensen deftly introduces us to the multi-faceted characters that fill Janey’s world including Hector’s best friend Jam, a charming French horn virtuoso who travels around Canada playing with various brass quartets and sleeping with women in all ten provinces… he’s still working on the territories. Then there’s the grim Beatrice Haight, one of Janey’s fellow lecturers, who is organizing a conference on twenty-first century notions of decadence (the thought sends Janey into gales of laughter) and the “fabulous” Blanche Grimm, a…

The Knife Sharpener’s Bell by Rhea Tregebov Published by Coteau Books Review by Shelley A. Leedahl $21.00 ISBN 978-1-55050-408-8 Recommendation: if you buy The Knife Sharpener’s Bell, by Saskatchewan-born writer Rhea Tregebov, budget your time accordingly, because you’ll not be able to put this gripping historical novel down. Where to begin? The plot? The story starts in Winnipeg, 1935, with the narrator, Annette, age nine, reluctantly seeing her idealist father off at the train station. He’s returning to Russia, the homeland, because he sees capitalism failing in the west amid the chaos of the Great Depression, and he believes “a planned economy” is “the only rational approach;” because it’ll make his shrewish wife happy; and because the Soviet Union is “a good place for the Jews.” After the visit, he’s convinced that his family must make their home in the east. Once back in Europe, however, the parents stay in Odessa and Annette and brother Ben continue to Moscow, where it’s safer. Except it isn’t. Or perhaps I should speak of the writing: Tregebov’s novel is literature. When she paints the scene of Annette in the middle of a war zone, among a river of people trying to get to…