Wiseman’s Wager by Dave Margoshes Published by Coteau Books Review by Shelley A. Leedahl $21.95 ISBN 978-1-55050-601-3 Winter’s an especially wonderful time to settle in with a thick and thought-provoking novel, and Coteau Books provides one that fits the bill nicely. Wiseman’s Wager is by the prolific and award-winning Dave Margoshes, who has been entertaining readers with his novels, short story collections, poetry, and nonfiction (a biography of Tommy Douglas) for decades. The Saskatchewan-based writer has now spun a 382-page tale about two Jewish-Canadian brothers, both in their 80s, and their often tumultuous lives. There’s a gun, and prison time. There are multiple marriages, Yiddish, and the Communist Party. There are counselling sessions with a desirable female psychologist, and there’s a wife in a 12-year coma. This dialogue-driven novel is less about plot, however, and more about the relationship between the brothers-and the family they’ve lost-and how memory kicks in and out, seemingly of its own volition, like a weak signal on an ancient radio. Zan, the intellectual protagonist, wrote a novel (“The Wise Men of Chelm”) that was a failure when published in 1932, but re-released 30 years later to great acclaim. Throughout the story feisty Zan mourns his…

The Rawhide Homesteader by Scott Henders Published by Benchmark Press Review by Justin Dittrick ISBN 978192735218 $19.95 Scott Henders’ The Rawhide Homesteader offers readers an engrossing narrative engemmed with wisdom about the human condition within boundaries of the natural order. It is a novel most remarkable for its true-as-life characters, all of whom are intelligently moulded by the institutions of social life demarcating society, yet show the strains in traditional ways, under pressures of family, religion, nature, and changing socio-economic conditions at the turn of the 20th Century. Several characters are twice born, once into what must be endured, and once into what must be done to live well for themselves and their loved ones. The novel also offers rich insight into the spiritual life as a means of learning respect for forces of man and nature that can expand, yet will just as likely devastate, the soul. It is a novel about the inescapable needs that pulsate in the human psyche, the ties of society within and across cultural lines, and the inborn patterns of nature that provide the logic in which human beings must progress toward self-understanding and enlightened acceptance. At the heart of this narrative is Josh…

Swedes’ Ferry by Allan Safarik Published by Coteau Books Review by Keith Foster $19.95 ISBN 978-1-55050-561-0 Swedes’ Ferry is a double-barrelled adventure tale, and author Allan Safarik lets loose with both barrels blazing. His novel has a cast of colourful characters, some based on actual historical people like North-West Mounted Police Commissioner Lawrence Herchmer, others fictional but very much imbued with the breath of life. The search for a tall man who robbed a bank in Bismarck, North Dakota, killed the manager, and galloped away on a stolen powerhouse of a horse leads two Pinkerton detectives to Regina in 1894. There they try to enlist the aid of the imperious Herchmer, who proves unco-operative. Their break in the case comes from two attractive “spies” operating in a brothel above a Chinese restaurant. The tall man is aided by Bud Quigley, an astute horse trader, who brokers the deal of a lifetime with James J. Hill, president of the Great Northern Railway and owner of the First National Bank that was robbed. A ferry, operated by two Swedish brothers, plays a pivotal role in the tall man’s attempt to retrieve his hidden stash of $44,000. With a background as a poet,…

Dollybird by Anne Lazurko Published by Coteau Books Reviewed by Jackie Blakely $19.95 ISBN 978-1-55050-563-4 Dollybird, by Anne Lazurko, is a hopeful tale of love and loss on the Canadian prairies in the early 1900’s. Written in first person narrative, Lazurko brings to life the stories of Dillan, an Irish immigrant from Cape Breton, fleeing memories of a dead wife and poverty, and Moira from Halifax, pregnant and sent to Saskatchewan by her parents until the baby is born and adopted. Lazurko weaves their tales, chapter by chapter, as the two strangers struggle to come to terms with loss and change while making a new life for themselves in Ibsen, Saskatchewan. Beautifully set in the backdrop of the Canadian prairie wilderness, Dollybird is a remembrance of hardship and new frontiers. While Dillan tries desperately to get over the death of his wife shortly after childbirth, Moira struggles with being abandoned by her lover and her parents, forced to live in the middle of an unsettled land until her child is born and she can resume her dream of becoming a doctor. When Moira takes a job as Dillan’s housekeeper – his dollybird – she finds herself becoming more accustomed to…

The Path to Ardroe by John Lent Published by Thistledown Press Review by Justin Dittrick ISBN 978-1-927068-01-4 John Lent’s novel, The Path to Ardroe, offers a sustained, polymorphous meditation on understanding and accepting oneself, as seen in the shared memories, thoughts, and experiences of several Canadians. It offers a tapestry consisting of four strands of narrative, including those of three characters approaching mid-life, which are told in the first-person, and one of a young woman in her early twenties, which is told in the third-person. Lent’s approach in this terrain is balanced and focused, each character’s situation being sufficiently engrossing to make the experience effortlessly contemplative, highly observant, and satisfyingly rich with detail and personal insight. It is not only an enjoyable novel to read, but to sustain in the mind, as each perspective differs in its orientation to the landscape, the present, and the past, making the strands of selves form the parts of a distinct chord, the hum of the chord being unique and enjoyable, in itself. The Path to Ardroe is a novel of the themes that recur and reverberate across lives and generations, showing their tendency to enter and enrich the texture of human thought and…

Given by Susan Musgrave Published by Thistledown Press Review by Hannah Muhajarine $19.95 ISBN 978-1-927068-02-1 Susan Musgrave has created a story that is both beautiful and heart-wrenching. Given continues where Cargo of Orchids, Musgrave’s previous novel, left off, but it is as welcoming to new readers as it is to old. Indeed, those who discover Given will no doubt be pleased to find that in Cargo, they can learn the full story of the narrator’s intriguing past. The narrator, who remains unnamed, escapes from prison at the beginning of the novel and travels back to her home on an island in B.C. In this small community there are many protestors, a Christian vegetable salesman, a ‘Church of the Holy Brew’, and a café that serves a ‘Philosophical Chicken special’. There is humour, but the majority of it is dark, suitable for the novel’s themes of poverty, addiction, and grief. The narrator is haunted, literally, by the ghosts of her two friends from Death Row. Although they are dead, Frenchy and Rainy are incredibly vibrant. They speak in a witty and inventive slang, speaking disturbing truth using many original turns of phrase. The journey is very much an inner, emotional one,…

The Cast Stone by Harold Johnson Published by Thistledown Press Review by Fleur Macqueen Smith $19.95 ISBN 978-1-897235-89-8 The Cast Stone is the third novel from Harold Johnson, who was born and lives in Northern Saskatchewan and balances his time between practicing law in La Ronge and operating his family’s traditional trapline using a dog team. While Johnson sets the tone for the novel with its subtitle, a novel of uprising, the story unfolds in a thoughtful, unhurried pace, often interspersed with humour. This novel won the 2012 Fiction award at the Saskatchewan Book Awards, and the judges called it an “ambitious, wide-ranging and wise novel whose roots extend from the land and local community to the world.” It is narrated by Ben Robe, a retired political science professor who returns home to his reserve at Moccasin Lake in Northern Saskatchewan to finish his life in peace and solitude. Within quick succession, he is drawn into two situations that interrupt his plans. First, he reconnects with Monica, a former student who wants him to become involved in insurgency activities arising from the sudden and unwelcome annexation of Canada by the United States. Second, he learns that his brief affair with…

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…

In Nobody Cries at Bingo Dawn Dumont shows us the ups and down of life on a Saskatchewan reserve. I came to this book not knowing much about life on the Rez, hoping to learn. But after reading Dumont’s stories about a prairie girl who loves to read, I realized that I’d come to understand more about our similarities than our differences.

Bone Coulee: a Novel by Larry Warwaruk Published by Coteau Books Review by Leeann Minogue $19.95 ISBN-13: 9781550504590 The plot of Larry Warwaruk’s Bone Coulee centers on a heinous crime committed more than sixty years ago. Mac Chorniak, a retired farmer with a passion for Ukrainian poetry, is still haunted by the senseless crime he and his friends committed against a young First Nations athlete when they were teenagers. There was no punishment at the time, but Chorniak can’t forget the senseless violence. He doesn’t know that the First Nations woman who’s moved into the house next door was part of the same incident, and has a score to settle. Throughout the novel, history grates on the present as characters try to decide what should be celebrated and what should be forgotten. The small-town residents stage a celebration to commemorate an old-time wagon trail, but also witness the destruction of the town’s last standing grain elevator. Landowners near Bone Coulee hunt for native arrowheads and display them in their basements, but have few personal relationships with real-life First Nations people. A young First Nations woman whose mother was sent to residential school learns her people’s traditions at university. As well…