113 Boathouse Hill by Joyce Olesen Published by Your Nickel’s Worth Publishing Review by Regine Haensel $17.95 ISBN 978-1-927756-26-3 “The land breathes life – of the ancient times when the first tipis stood over those stone rings, of the days when five children romped over the hills and fields, and of a time when those children, now grown to middle and older age, came home again.” So writes Joyce Olesen in the last chapter of her memoir. It is a wonderful journey she takes us on, with evocative writing that brings the 1950’s of a farm family to life for the reader. Olesen was born and grew up in southwest Saskatchewan, and has lived in various parts of Canada, including British Columbia, New Brunswick and Alberta. For the last forty-two years Swift Current has been her home. She is a member of the Prairie Quills writers’ group. The book takes us all the way back to Norway in the late 1800’s, where Olesen’s paternal grandfather and grandmother were born. “…I touched the big rock near her old home and thought about her as a young woman …” We follow the young people to the United States, and in 1915, to…

What Did You Draw by Ruth Chorney Illustrated by Nicolas Chorney Published by Your Nickel’s Worth Publishing Review by Jessica Bickford $14.95 978-1-894431-91-0 The mother-son team of Ruth Chorney and Nicolas Chorney have created a charming little story about a boy and his big sister having an imaginative art session in What Did You Draw?.  Ruth’s story is fun and shows a brother and sister pair who actually get along in a way that is both realistic and adorable while they draw together.  The sister’s drawings are realistic animals, while Danny, her younger brother, depicts his own fantastical, hybrid creations.  Even Danny and Sister themselves are depicted in their own art styles, which is really interesting and gives the whole story the feel that the kids are the ones telling it. The story itself is simple and follows Danny and his sister as they draw various things.  Danny’s sister draws different animals for him, and tells him what they are, and then Danny draws his own versions, asking his sister to guess what he has drawn.  Almost all of these are silly hybrids of what his sister has just drawn, including a hippopotamoose.  Danny and his sister keep drawing until,…

Baba’s Babushka: A Magical Ukrainian Wedding By Marion Mutala Published by Your Nickel’s Worth Publishing Review by Alison Slowski $14.95 ISBN 978-1-927756-06-5 Baba’s Babushka: A Magical Ukrainian Wedding is an engrossing picture book, rendered in beautiful detail by author Marion Mutala and artist Amber Rees, that tells the heartwarming tale of a young woman named Natalia. Natalia, aided by the memory of her grandmother, goes on a magical journey to learn more about her family’s – and people’s – rich history. During Natalia’s walk down memory lane, she visits all the important moments which involved her grandparents’ time together as young people. The story details her grandparents’ courtship, including the meeting of their two families before and during their seven-day Ukrainian wedding. Mutala uniquely and accurately depicts the Ukrainian customs that are special to a couple’s wedding, such as the gift- or pumpkin-giving before a couple agrees to marry, and the giving of sheshkeh, pinecones made of dough, to welcome their guests in their village to their wedding. Most special of all, this book incorporates the tradition of the korovai, the traditional braided wedding bread, into its mention of the festivities. The inclusion of a korovai recipe in the back…

Crown Corporations in Saskatchewan by Boris W. Kishchuk Published by Your Nickel’s Worth Publishing Review by Keith Foster $19.95 ISBN 978-1-894431-95-8 Few issues in Saskatchewan stir up as much controversy as Crown corporations. One need look no further than recent provincial elections. But Saskatoon author Boris Kishchuk deliberately steers clear of politics in his book, Crown Corporations of Saskatchewan. Instead, he focuses on their history and evolution. Kischuck divides Crown corporations into three categories: for job and wealth creation; for investment and financial services; and to provide services to the people of the province. Crown corporations have a long history in Saskatchewan. The Territorial government created the first Crown in 1901, selling hail insurance to farmers, before Saskatchewan even became a province. Some Crowns may not exactly be household names – like Saskatchewan Government Airways, Saskatchewan First Call Corporation, and Saskatchewan Box Factory Ltd. – but they nevertheless played an important part in the province’s history. Crown corporations sometimes invested in private enterprise, some with unusual names such as Hollywood at Home, Inc. and Clothing for Modern Times, Inc. Kishckuk brings his personal knowledge to the subject. He served as chair of the Saskatchewan Rate Review Panel for five years….

Tomorrow It Will Be Fine by Joseph Vida Published by Your Nickel’s Worth Publishing Review by Justin Dittrick ISBN 978-1-927371-34-3 It should be said at the outset that Joseph Vida’s Tomorrow It Will Be Fine is an outstanding achievement. It is entertaining and absorbing, socially conscious and sure-footed, linguistically extravagant and methodically plotted, sprawling and detailed, witty and trenchant. Its themes are so engrained in Canadian consciousness that the novel’s title can be read as prophetic of the eternal wish and frustrations of immigrants anywhere. Vida has a fine ear for the dialects of both the transplanted and native. His observation of social attitudes and tendencies and his depiction of idioms and jargons are spot on. Yet, the novel goes a little further than that, a little deeper. Few Canadian social novels read like a symphonic work. Joseph Vida’s does. At its heart, the work is a social novel set in Toronto, which is experiencing a boom after the Second World War. It’s protagonist, Endre, is a Hungarian immigrant seen at an anxious, but illuminating, time in his life. He is beginning to tire of working job after job without any reason to expect a better future. He has suffered…

My Battle of the Atlantic by Donald A. Bowman Published by Your Nickel’s Worth Publishing Review by Keith Foster $16.95 ISBN 978-1-894431-99-6 There’s something about the sea that seems to attract men from the Prairies. Donald Bowman was one of them, and he records his personal experiences in his memoir, My Battle of the Atlantic. Born and raised in Saskatoon, Bowman enlisted as a teen at the outset of World War II. After trying his hand at bayonet practice, and reading about rats in the trenches during the First World War, he realized the infantry was not for him. The Air Force appealed to him, but only if he could be a pilot, and he didn’t think he had the qualifications for that. So the Navy it was. While on leave in Saskatoon, he married his sweetheart, Muriel Beatty. They booked a room at the Bessborough Hotel, but the war cut short their honeymoon. Bowman regales readers with his adventures as an officer on HMCS Edmundston, a corvette intended for coastal duty but used to escort convoys across the Atlantic, and named for a city in New Brunswick. In heavy seas, it would be flung about with as much grace…

Black Fury, Help Me, I’m Naked: Book One by Donna Miller Published by Your Nickel’s Worth Publishing Review by Catherine Fuchs $19.95 ISBN 9781894431798 This riveting book takes the reader to knee level to peer into the keyhole of the marriage of the author’s parents. Outwardly they were a good looking and glamorous couple who both tried to hide the abuse that was always smouldering beneath the veneer of their image as “a happy couple.” Their young daughter, Saskatchewan author Donna Miller, gives us a first hand account of what it was like to grow up watching her father physically abuse her mother. Her father, Joe, was a very socially intelligent yet insecure man who was extremely jealous and controlling of her of mother. He was also a textbook abuser, who would explain away his behavior with his unenlightened remarks such as, “ I admit I’ve slapped her, but only when she deserved it.” Worse, he would mock her bruises by saying to her, “You look so beautiful in blue.” His actions did always seem to come back to haunt him though, like the time he slapped her so hard she fell into a coma and lost the twins boys…

Rink Burgers by Todd Devonshire Published by Your Nickel’s Worth Publishing Review by Keith Foster $19.95 ISBN 978-1-894431-74-3 Stompin’ Tom Connors sang about “The Good Old Hockey Game.” Todd Devonshire, in his Rink Burgers memoir, elaborates on what made the good old hockey game so darn good. When his mother calls to say the family home has been sold, Todd realizes he must rescue his childhood possessions before they are gone forever. He and his wife Dawn sort through boxes of memorabilia and souvenirs as Todd reminisces about his glory days as both a player and fan. The memoir is set in the 1980s in Big River, SK., a community where “news travelled like cops going for donuts.” Todd’s memoir is replete with humour, and his robust imagination realistically recreates the antics of his childhood. His exaggerations are so typical of a youngster. He recalls when, as a six-year-old, he scored his first goal and lost his first tooth on the same day. This coincidence could mean only one thing – he was now a real hockey player! Todd describes his coming of age and explores his relationship with his father, from whom he developed his love of hockey. A…

It Takes 2 to Tango, Maybe 3: A Serendipitous Discovery in the Treatment of VLT Gambling Addiction by Clyde Manswell, M.D., Published by Your Nickel’s Worth Publishing Review by Catherine Fuchs $14.95 ISBN 978-1-894431-83-5 Dr. Manswell’s book It Takes 2 to Tango, Maybe 3 reveals the complexity of treating gambling addicts. This is the true story of two women who are close friends and gambling buddies. Over time, both women come to be patients of Dr. Manswell’s. This book documents their lives and their struggles with the addiction of gambling. Those who do not suffer from this affliction will be surprised by the creative ways gamblers readjust their lives to accommodate their gambling habit. Gambling addicts will work overtime, cut out regular vacations, and eat jelly sandwiches just so they can finance their trips to the casino. What is even more interesting is that the gamblers themselves are unaware and even surprised when their adaptive behavior is first pointed out to them. The book is not only inspirational it is a page-turner. You will want to know, what is the “ultimate discovery” that these two gambling friends ultimately find that helps them to finally beat their gambling addiction. With Dr….

To Everything a Season by Helen Mourre Published by Your Nickel’s Worth Publishing Review by Alison Slowski $16.95 ISBN 978-1-894431-89-7 Helen Mourre’s short story collection, To Everything a Season, is her latest work, after the books Landlocked and What’s Come Over Her from Thistledown Press. Throughout her short stories about parents, about children, about young unmarried men and women, Mourre displays a strong understanding of the bonds that hold community and family together. She captures the reader’s attention by painting a portrait of the hardships families endure while experiencing the loss of a parent, the loss of a spouse, or even the loss of a cherished family home in exchange for a new one. The theme of loss carries through the entire book, paralleled and mitigated by the spark of hope. Though the characters have experienced some dark times, there is always the hope that things will improve. Mourre’s writing is candid and honest, and each swell of each story told, while it may be tragic, is also filled with hope.  Her words are penned with obvious love for the Saskatchewan prairies, a small-town community, and the ties between that community and friends and family. THIS BOOK IS AVAILABLE AT…