Confessions of a Dance Mom by Alison R. Montgomery Published by Your Nickel’s Worth Publishing Review by Shelley A. Leedahl $16.95 ISBN 978-1-927756-28-7 Saskatonian Alison R. Montgomery recently published Confessions of a Dance Mom, and simply put, I love this book. From the outside, it’s an honest, naturally-voiced retrospective of the author’s son’s journey from a child with an interest in dance to his employment with the prestigious Stuttgarter Ballett. But it’s much more. It’s a compelling story about family, and a strong treatise on dedication, pride, loss, and letting go. Maternal love is at the heart of this beautifully designed and well-written testimony. Interesting, then, that my out-of-province daughter was visiting days before I began this book. She saw it on my desk, and said: “Alison was one of my high school teachers.” Of course. I hadn’t made the connection, but then I also remembered Montgomery, and my daughter and I recalled the tragic loss of her elder son, who died at 24 while mountain-climbing in BC. This is important, because that early loss forms the bass-line in this story: a mother fully supports her now only child’s rise from Brenda’s School of Baton and Dance in Saskatoon to…

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…

A Country Boy: From Sussex to the Canadian West by R.D. Symons Published by Hagios Press Review by Keith Foster $17.95 ISBN 978-1-926710-24-2 A Country Boy: From Sussex to the Canadian West is a memoir of an English lad transplanted to Saskatchewan, where he took root and flourished as a naturalist, author, and artist. Robert David Symons came by his artistic talent honestly – his father was a professional artist, and a critical one at that. He called his son’s first painting a “mess” and trampled on it “like one of Kipling’s elephants,” then showed the youngster the proper way to paint. Symons excels at detailed descriptions of prairie life, painting vivid pictures in the reader’s mind: “Coffee bubbled in a granite pot; on the well scrubbed cabinet big, brown loaves steamed, belly upward, cheek by jowl with fragrant pies.” With an artist’s eye, Symons describes one man who “possessed a tremendous acreage of gleaming teeth, and very dark eyebrows, like bits of moleskin pasted on.” His description of a prairie blizzard, resulting in 800 dead or dying cattle, is smack on. Symons enlisted in the Canadian Expeditionary Force during World War I and in one particularly hot battle found…

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…

Rear-View Mirror by Eleanor Moline Sinclair Published by Your Nickel’s Worth Publishing Review by William Wardill $19.95 ISBN 978-1-894431-64-4 Eleanor Moline Sinclair isn’t a social historian. Instead, she is a keen observer of history as she has lived it. In a memoir written for grandchildren who were living in Taiwan at the time, she identifies herself as the daughter of Swedish and German immigrants, the eighth in a family of ten children, student, nurse, farmer’s wife, and mother. Her slice of history begins with what she knows of her grandparents and continues with the stages of her own life to 2010, when, although more comfortable with a simpler lifestyle, she makes use of the products of technology’s headlong race. Sinclair is not an academic making clinical conclusions. She has been, and still is, a participant. Her colloquial account is touched by love and tinged with longing. In the Epilogue, she writes ( for her grandchildren): “Survival, rigour, grit and determination brought us to what and where we are today. Life has dictated that. But we won’t be going back …Grandpa Mac and I Grammy El, are 70 years old now, and hope that reading this story will provide you with…

Within the Stillness: One Family’s Winter on a Northern Trapline by Keith Olsen Published by Your Nickel’s Worth Publishing Review by William Wardill $16.95 ISBN 978–1–894431–61-3 This book encapsulates deeply etched memories of Keith Olsen, whose grandfather came to the United States from Denmark in 1910 at the age of thirteen. When he moved to Canada, he settled in the Big River district of Saskatchewan, where he married Anna Ethier in 1914. After the birth of two daughters, she became a victim of the 1918 influenza plague. The elder daughter, Florence, became the mother of James Edward Olsen, who was born out of wedlock in 1934. Florence Olsen married an English immigrant, Thomas Edward Nicholson, in 1937. After only nine years in the Nicholson family, James Olsen’s relationship with his stepfather became unendurable, and he set out on his own. He was twelve years old. In the late summer of 1960, James Olsen, his wife (always identified as Mum), and their young sons Clarence and Keith went to Little Mahigan Lake for a winter on the trapline. What follows is a colloquial account of living off the land. Aside from a few purchased necessities, they ate what forest and lake…

Prairie Feast: A Writer’s Journey Home For Dinner by Amy Jo Ehman Published by Coteau Books Review by Shelley A. Leedahl $24.95 ISBN 978-1-55050-413-2 Amy Jo Ehman’s book is scrumptious. Part memoir, part “How To” (eat locally), part stand-up comedy, and part recipe book with glossy photos, Prairie Feast: a writer’s journey home for dinner is a literary, culinary, and, dare I say a cultural tour de force. From berry picking to fowl (or “fall”) suppers (“Choosing which [one] to attend is like choosing between movies when all the blockbusters are out”); from zucchini overload to the vagaries of small-town food festivals, this revelatory book is the very personification of Saskatchewan. Ehman grew up on a farm near Craik and her rural upbringing remains central to her heart. It also fuels her appetite for fresh prairie … well, everything. In 2005, Ehman and her husband embarked on a year of eating locally­­­ – almost everything they ate, from spices to mushrooms to the flour she baked with – had to be produced in Saskatchewan. Readers are privy not only to how the pair managed, but why it’s important to support local producers and grow one’s own food, and just how…

Songcatcher by Aline Perret-Vallée Your Nickel’s Worth Publishing Review by Sharon Adam $16.95 ISBN 978-894431-32-3 Songcatcher falls in a new genre that combines autobiography with poetry and essay. It is the story of an ordinary woman who enjoys her life and shares with her audience the blessings gathered over eight decades. A Saskatchewan girl, Aline tells us her story in a very entertaining and enjoyable format. She begins with her mother’s family and the story of how they ended up in Duck Lake, where Aline’s mother meets her future husband and they begin their own family. The author shares the respect and joy her home-life provided in times that were hard on the prairies. We glimpse the farm life of a young girl and her brothers and sisters. Aline shares stories and poems of her school years and of leaving home in 1949 to become a nun at the Novitiate in St. Hyacinth, Quebec. She then begins a teaching career that sees her move to various locales, including Prince Albert, Spiritwood, The Pas, Laurier, Debden and Swift Current, ending in Wadena. We learn of a love story that begins in Prince Albert and eventually ends happily with Aline leaving her…