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…

Bone Sense by Laurie Lynn Muirhead Published by Thistledown Press Review by Catherine Fuchs $9.95 ISBN 978-1-927068-07-6 Bone Sense grabs the reader right from the start. Laurie Lynn Muirhead’s poetry is voiced in a rich texture of metaphors in an up-close and frank look at life on a cattle ranch. Laurie Lynn Muirhead tells her story through poetry as she weaves words with an unvarnished truth about the hard life of a rancher’s wife. She rolls out of her “warm dry bed” and takes you along on her early morning walks to the dugout as she begins a long day of daily chores and obligations. Ms. Muirhead’s poetry has the ability to touch all the senses. You can feel the frost on your skin and hear the coyotes howl in the dark as they wait to steal new life from the weak. Author Laurie Lynn Muirhead ranches in Shellbrook, Saskatchewan and she writes her poetry between the calving, the slaughtering, the 4H Fund Raiders and auctions. You will follow her story in poetry as it unfolds through the seasons. Ranching life is certainly not a life for the faint-hearted, but the poetic telling of the tale is for everyone who…

With Love to You All, Bogga S by Audrhea Lande Published by Your Nickel’s Worth Publishing Review by Catherine Fuchs $28.95 ISBN 978-1-894431-62-0 This biography of Sigurbjorg Stefansson, known affectionately as “Bogga”, brings to us the original and inspiring story of “Bogga’s” life. From the outset, author Audrhea Lande engages the reader by weaving together the stories and personal letters from the life of Sigurbjorg Stefansson, long time teacher and philanthropist. With Love to You All, Bogga S contains personal and evocative descriptions of the hardships of immigrant life in the early 20th century amid the Prairie Provinces of Saskatchewan and Manitoba. The story of “Bogga’s” life are preserved with many historical pictures, letters and newspaper clippings that give a visual support to this personal account of one of Canada’s outstanding pioneers. Audrhea Lande reveals the depth of character that was possessed by Sigurbjorg Stefansson, a woman who cared deeply about social issues, and a woman who was ahead of her time as a freethinker and humanist. Sigurbjorg “Bogga” Stefansson, like many of the Icelandic pioneers contributed greatly to furthering literacy in Canada through the arts and education. Sigurbjorg Stefansson taught school at Carrick, Lundar, and at Gimli from 1923…

Full Steam to Canada by Anne Patton Published by Coteau Books for Kids Review by Catherine Fuchs $8.95 ISBN 978-1-55050-457-6 Full Steam to Canada takes the reader along on a capricious journey from Victorian England to the wilderness of Canada in the early 1900’s. All of this is told through the eyes of 10 year old Dorothy Bolton. Young readers get to follow Dorothy and her new friends as she travels with her family across the Atlantic and across Canada to start a new life on the prairies. Anne Patton’s latest novel is based on a true story that has magical beginnings in the chance story telling of an elderly woman. More than a quarter century ago, Anne Patton taped an interview with the original ‘Dorothy’, and built on these memories a fictional cast of characters venturing to start a new life in the Barr Colonies of the Canadian Prairie in the year 1903. Many of Dorothy’s journeys and observations of her new life were further based on the archives and diaries of the original settlers from the Barr Colonies in Saskatchewan. The historical context in which this book is written will take the reader back in time. Young readers…