Tales This Side of the Elysian Fieldsby Trevor W. HarrisonPublished by Shadowpaw PressReview by Toby A. Welch  $24.99 ISBN 9781998273249 Few things are more entertaining than an engrossing travel book; that definitely applies to Tales This Side of the Elysian Fields.  Harrison crisscrossed the globe during the 1970s and 1980s and shares those experiences with us in this book. He was based in Canada during those decades but traveled around North America, Greece, India, Spain, and countries that surrounded the Himalayan mountains, among others. Each location brought a fresh batch of adventures and a slew of interesting people that crossed his path.  My favourite of the fifteen stories is Harrison’s time spent in Barcelona, Spain. During his month there in March 1973, the modernist revolution was underway although the country was still experiencing an authoritarian regime under Francisco Franco. It was a fascinating historical time to relive through Harrison’s words. And in an interesting twist, Harrison recounts a return trip to Barcelona in 2022 and what a different place it is now, in so many ways.  I was a bit confused by the title. What the heck is an Elysian field? It turns out that when Harrison was in high school, one…

The Pathological Casebook of Dr Frances McGill – New Editionby Myrna L. PetersenPublished by Ideation Entertainment IncReview by Michelle Shaw$25.00 ISBN 9780973889383 Crime novels are my go-to genre, so I was thrilled to discover this biography of Saskatchewan’s very own Sherlock Holmes – a forensic pathologist who worked closely with the RCMP for many decades and was involved in hundreds of cases. Dr Frances McGill (1882-1959) was Canada’s first female pathologist and a pioneer in forensic medicine. Although she grew up in Manitoba and received her medical degree at the University of Manitoba, her professional life was spent almost entirely in Saskatchewan. As Provincial Bacteriologist and Pathologist for Saskatchewan, and later Director of the Saskatchewan Laboratories, she was involved in numerous lifesaving and life-changing endeavours including producing anti-flu vaccines for the Spanish Influenza Pandemic in 1918 and 1919, setting up free clinics for Venereal Disease throughout the province after World War One (she also set up the first Wasserman tests for Syphilis) and was a forerunner in allergy testing. But it’s as a Forensic Pathologist that she’s arguably most well-known. In 1923 the Attorney General’s Department asked the Provincial Laboratory to assist with numerous criminal investigations and Dr McGill began…

An Open-Ended Runby Layne ColemanPublished by University of Regina PressReview by Brandon Fick$22.95 ISBN 9781779400260 Layne Coleman’s An Open-Ended Run is a deep dive into one man’s love, grief, ecstasy, failings, and triumphs. The entire range of human emotion is on display in this short memoir. Dramatic and morally complex, the book traces Coleman’s life from his fundamentalist upbringing in rural Saskatchewan to becoming a noted actor, playwright, and theatre director in Toronto. It is an intensely felt love story between Coleman and French Canadian arts critic and novelist, Carole Corbeil, whose premature death from cancer in 2000 upended his life. In wake of that loss, Coleman had to navigate being a widower and single father, and by far, the relationship with his daughter Charlotte is the most touching part of the memoir. Yet he does not skimp out on less savoury memories of sexual encounters, questionable decisions, drug and alcohol addiction, physical health challenges, even his own sense of vanity. Reading an aging actor’s memoir may not sound like most people’s idea of fun, but I assure you, if you give An Open-Ended Run a shot, you will be shocked and moved in equal measure. Truly, this is one…

The Day My Mother Walked on Waterby Helen MourrePublished by Your Nickels Worth PublishingReview by Michelle Shaw$19.95 ISBN 9781778690389 This slim collection of essays is my first encounter with prairie writer Helen Mourre’s work, and I was quickly captivated by her thoughtful and detailed descriptions of a life well lived. I consciously slowed down as I read through the essays in The Day My Mother Walked on Water, partly because I didn’t want them to end but also because I wanted to savour each word picture and ponder Mourre’s musings on faith, family, and the seasons of life. The essays are firmly grounded in Saskatchewan– even those that take place elsewhere are still solidly tethered to the province. In each essay Mourre slows us down to a particular place and time and gives us snapshots of her life through the years. On the beach of a northern lake as a child where she nearly drowned, traveling to Hungary with her husband Paul to visit their son, adventuring with friends to Italy, the poignant last few months of her father’s life and, in the final essay, contemplating her new reality as her husband enters the beginning stages of dementia. Mourre’s stories…

Releasing Your Need To Please: Escaping Romantic Relationships with Narcissistic Womenby James ButlerPublished by Wood Dragon BooksReview by Shelley A. Leedahl$21.99 ISBN 9781990863301 I wanted to review Releasing Your Need To Please: Escaping Romantic Relationships with Narcissistic Women because of the premise. It’s unusual, in my experience, to read about female narcissism, but Saskatoon counsellor and author James Butler writes that there’s a “growing phenomenon of women who perpetuate narcissistic abuse.” The men they’re in relationship with are the “pleasers,” and Butler says the only way for a pleaser to live a happy, healthy life is to leave the narcissistic relationship. “If … you are looking for help to escape your toxic relationship, this book is definitely for you,” the disclaimer states. The self-help book’s purpose is “to offer information about how to get out of unfixable, unsustainable, dangerous relationships.” Pleasers must break the “never-ending cycle” of “manipulation and accommodation,” once and for all, and Butler advises them to “lawyer up before [they] plan to escape.” It can be a “disease to please.” Narcissists and pleasers attract one another because of a deep need for love and acceptance that, Butler maintains, they didn’t get enough of as children. He speaks…

Standstill: A Hopewell Earthworks Daybook and Other Essaysby Bruce RicePublished by Long Road PressReview by Shelley A. Leedahl$20.00 ISBN 9781068949708 I’ve long admired the breadth of Bruce Rice’s sophisticated poetry, and now, with the publication of Standstill: A Hopewell Earthworks Daybook and Other Essays, I can attest that his creative nonfiction is equally diverse—and even more satisfying. In his new five-part collection, Saskatchewan’s former Poet Laureate explores various types of language and arts’ life-saving abilities; presents a poetic and sensitive travelogue as he crosses the border to explore the 2000-year-old Hopewell Earthworks (sites aligned with the lunar standstill, long sacred to Indigenous peoples); and transports us to the ICU-bedside vigil for his deaf sister in Nova Scotia. This award-winning Regina scribe—oft-praised for his painterly use of light and shadow—continues to raise the bar with poetic evocations of these elements, as well. Rice explains that “the prairie creature in [him] is drawn to the farthest edges of a place,” and a 2012 trip to Scotland’s Isle of Lewis, Outer Hebrides to appreciate the Standing Stones of Callanish sparked his desire to experience one of the “three known Native American standstill sites.” These journeys are pilgrimages, and the writer treads carefully: what…

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…

I’m Just Gerry: Building a Forever Company the Price Wayby Rob Wozny (Afterward by Gerry Price)Published by Wood Dragon BooksReview by Michelle Shaw$21.99 ISBN 9781990863318 I’m Just Gerry is the compelling story of the growth of a small prairie company and its journey to become a world leader in its field. Price Industries grew from a little company in Winnipeg to become a billion-dollar world leader in the heating, ventilation, and air-conditioning (HVAC) industry. The book explains the principles that helped the company to do that, many of which seem counterintuitive to succeeding in the cutthroat business world of today. Fundamental concepts like service first and treating others the way you want to be treated. The fact that the business has succeeded is an incredible testimony to the perseverance and vision of Gerry Price. I know nothing about the HVAC business, but I feel as if this little book – and Gerry Price himself – are well-kept secrets that need to be shared. Gerry’s approach is clear: “What counts is how leaders treat others and, more importantly, how they treat the people in the business with the least authority and power. Anybody who abuses people or takes advantage of people…

A Life in Piecesby Jo-Ann WallacePublished by Thistledown PressReview by Brandon Fick$24.95 ISBN 9781771872560 Jo-Ann Wallace’s A Life in Pieces is a stunning memoir, brimming with wit, intellect, and poignancy. Wallace, who passed away in June, has left behind a book of gems, thirty short essays that map her life from childhood in a Montreal suburb to grad school in Toronto, onto years chairing a large English department at the University of Alberta, and her final chapter of life on the west coast. Wallace was a longtime academic, but she was also a poet, which is evident in the way these essays move associatively, back and forth in time, back and forth into ancestry, imagining, remembering, and questioning the life she lived, and the lives she did not. It is a challenge to select essays to highlight because each one offers something to ponder. Most start conversationally with an anecdote, then expand, retract, expand, like an accordion. “Whimsy” moves from the childhood memory of Wallace’s parents watching the Jimmy Stewart movie Harvey, about a man’s imaginary rabbit friend, to her own imaginary friend, to a friend’s distaste for “whimsy,” prompting her to theorize that beneath that “disavowal of whimsy” lies…

Baby Rollercoaster: The Unspoken Secret Sorrow of Infertilityby Janice ColvenPublished by Wood Dragon BooksReview by Toby A. Welch  $19.99 ISBN 9781989078587 Baby Rollercoaster is the true telling of one woman’s personal journey with infertility. It starts with her years as a child when she dreamt of being a mother and progresses to when her struggle to have a family ended. Colven now dedicates her life to sharing her infertility experience and finding a purposeful life beyond motherhood. I believe she has made tremendous strides in her mission with this powerful book.  For anyone struggling with infertility – or anyone who knows someone that is struggling with it – Baby Rollercoaster is a must-read. Colven tackled this heartbreaking subject with a deep sensitivity. She was vulnerable in a way that couldn’t have always been easy. That realness came through in her words. For example, “You need an abundance of hope and resilience on this journey of hope. Sometimes I wasn’t strong enough to hope… Choose hope, even when things seem hopeless. Lean on the people around you to hope when you can’t seem to do it for yourself. Be brave.” Cue Kleenex.  As she struggled with infertility, Colven saw numerous doctors. She…