The Haunted Hornby Edward WillettPublished by Endless Sky BooksReview by Shelley A. Leedahl$19.99 ISBN 9781998273706 Wow: Regina’s Edward Willett has done it again. He’s written a book—this time a light-hearted, middle years’ horror—that’s certain to keep young readers transfixed. The longtime multi-genre writer and publisher’s cracked the code to literary success: his plots zoom; his characters are credible and maintain distinctive voices; and he understands literary craft. In The Haunted Horn, the American Civil War meets present day and reality meets the supernatural, and it’s all more fun that a bunch of bugles. This engaging, republished novel (first edition, 2012) is set in “Oak Bluffs, Arkansas,” where Union soldiers defeated the Confederates in a fiery battle that closed out the Civil War. It revolves around eighth-grader Alex, a creative only child—he fancies himself “a future best-selling novelist”—small for his size, smart in science and English, and a French horn player in the school’s marching band. Willett notably reveals that Alex’s family is upper middle class: antique-obsessed Mom picks Alex up at school in a Lincoln SUV; Dad recently left retail management when elected to town council. Alex is a target for bully Sammy Findlater and his gang, and Sammy’s on…

Wîhtamawik/Tell Them: On a Life of Inspirationby Louise Bernice Halfe – Sky DancerPublished by University of Regina PressReview by Shelley A. Leedahl$27.95 ISBN 9781779400840 Award-winning Saskatchewan writer Louise Bernice Halfe – Sky Dancer is renowned for her candid, Cree-infused poetry and presentations. Her latest book, Wîhtamawik/Tell Them: On a Life of Inspiration, braids memoir, poetry and essays to reveal where the author’s found inspiration and, I would say, contentment, after a tumultuous early start. In the eloquent introduction by the author’s daughter, Omeasoo Wahpasiw, the latter writes: “My mom dances with both her bones and the bones of our people, and when they poke and punch her with their insistent rattling, she does us all a favour, as painful as it is, and leaves them naked in the wind.” Until age seven, Halfe lived with her family in a log cabin on the Saddle Lake Reserve and practiced traditional Cree ways of life. She doesn’t pretend that it was perfect. Her father drank and was emotionally volatile (“His heart was a cave of stalactites.”). Her parents “stooked hay, picked rocks/in white farmers’ fields”. Halfe “learned to hunt, skin, and butcher game through non-verbal methods. [She] also watched [her] grandparents work…

Blue thinks itself within meby Kim TrainorPublished by University of Regina PressReview by Shelley A. Leedahl$27.95 ISBN 9781779401205 I knew I was in for a different kind of book when I read the author’s dedication, which begins: “For the flying beings, the ones with sharp teeth,/the ones who swim, the fire stones, the trees, the rain.” By the end of prize-winning Vancouver writer Kim Trainor’s text, Blue thinks itself within me, I can affirm that her dedication tracks. Trainor sees, hears, experiences and questions with the intensity of a scientist and the detail of an artist as she draws readers both into the forest at the two-year Fairy Creek blockade near Vancouver Island’s Port Renfrew—where she joined other protestors to protect old growth logging—and through her elegiac and philosophical quandary re: how best to approach writing a long lyric poem about the oldgrowth specklebelly lichen (a rare and threatened species found on yellow cedar in ancient forests) in a kind of respectful co-making with this oldgrowth resident. Trainor describes artist Natasha Lavdovsky’s discovery of “over sixty trees draped in glittering specklebelly,” and explains that “The finding of such a large community of oldgrowth specklebelly was evidence of the age of…

The Chorus Beneath Our Feetby Melanie SchnellPublished by Radiant PressReview by Shelley A. Leedahl$25.00 ISBN 9781998926329 Regina writer Melanie Schnell’s debut novel, While the Sun is Above Us, earned her the Saskatchewan First Book Award and The City of Regina Award at the 2013 Saskatchewan Book Awards, and I expect her recently released second novel, The Chorus Beneath Our Feet, will also garner attention, particularly for its ambitious plot. Schnell’s braided several surprisingly disparate elements and parallelled the relationships between two sets of siblings in this crime story set in “Ravenwood,” Alberta. The first brother and sister were among the 100,000 Barnardo’s Homes’ children shipped from England to Canada to labour on farms between 1869 – 1948. These 100,000 “home children” were ripped from their families and treated extremely poorly in Canada. Ravenwood rumours suggest that the bodies of these separated siblings are buried beneath the massive oak tree (the “Harron Tree”) in the city’s central park. A local construction company is razing the tree for the construction of a mall, and protesters are rallying around the stately oak. The second set of siblings are Jes, an army Sargeant who’s returned home after eight years in Afghanistan—he’s accompanying his fellow…

Something for the Darkby Randy LundyPublished by University of Regina PressReview by Shelley A. Leedahl$19.95 ISBN 9781779400888 I’ve reviewed four of Randy Lundy’s transcendent poetry collections, and each time I’ve come away thinking surely this is as good as he gets. Then a new title’s released … and the ceiling rises again. Something for the Dark, Lundy’s latest, follows Field Notes for the Self (2020) and Blackbird Song (2018) in a trilogy of meditative books that address the whole of it: life and meaning; connections with people and place (he’s often “on the back deck” with cigarettes and coffee, and his poems surreptitiously venerate the prairies he long resided on); seasons; his beloved creatures (particularly dogs and birds); nothingness and silence; and writing poetry (“These lines are getting the/discussion nowhere”). I built a fire in the woodstove, lifted the old dog up onto the couch, and, in silence and solitude, let the words nourish me. Lundy possesses the artist’s gift of seeing, certainly, but he also exhibits the rare ability to render images and experiences into something other, something that borders on the holy—a crow feasting on the rib of a “road-killed deer” holds “a strip of meat/in its beak,…

Into the D/arkby David EliasPublished by Radiant PressReview by Shelley A. Leedahl$22.00 ISBN 9781998926381 Into the D/ark is the dream-like and aptly-titled new novel by veteran Winnipeg writer David Elias, as all is not well for blacksmith/artist Clarence; his wife, Rose; and their fire-disfigured sons in rural Manitoba circa 1963. Indeed, Rose’s best friend, Martha—who inadvertently photographs JFK’s assassination while on holiday—and her fanatical, ark-building brother, Abe, are also battling demons. Like the snow-whipped landscape, the characters are driven toward a frenzy with their disparate obsessions: Rose’s love of women’s magazines; her self-exiled sons’ non-stop watching of American TV programs (their panacea in the rough shack they’ve named “Bachelor’s Paradise);” Martha’s black and white photography, and her secret love for Rose; Abe’s ark project; and Clarence’s shift from welding farm implements to creating nonsensical metal monsters. The key to this original book’s success is manyfold. Firstly, the distinct characterizations and the author’s ability to credibly portray madness are remarkable: an entire, almost fantastical chapter is dedicated to Clarence’s unravelling, which coincides with the removal of his welding mask: … he now bathed in glorious unending light, all because he kept his naked eyes fixed on the dazzling blaze of metallic…

My Monster Mommyby Megan Ryan, Illustrated by Brenna SengerPublished by Meow! Pete’s PressReview by Shelley A. Leedahl$15.99 ISBN 9781069345912 The luckiest among us were read to as children, and long may that wonderful tradition continue. Giving children books as gifts—and spending quality time sharing these books with our loved ones—can lead to a lifelong love of literature. In today’s hectic technological era, I wondered if the sharing of “bedtime stories” is something that exhausted contemporary parents still have the time and energy for. After a little Googling, I learned that as recently as 2024, children’s and YA books [still] accounted for 40% of all English-language book sales in Canada. That’s great news—for writers and readers. With all the children’s books published over the centuries, coming up with original ideas can be challenging, but Saskatchewan writer—and busy mom—Megan Ryan has a delightful new children’s book that is indeed unique. My Monster Mommy is also timely: it addresses how mothers who also work outside the home might be extra tired, and require a little “alone time” as they switch gears between their jobs/careers and family time. The softcover My Monster Mommy—digitally illustrated by Brenna Senger— introduces us to young Sammy, who’s concerned that…

We are the Stars: Colonizing and Decolonizing the Oceti Sakowin Literary Traditionby Sarah HernandezPublished by University of Regina PressReview by Shelley A. Leedahl$39.95 ISBN 9780889779181 In We are the Stars: Colonizing and Decolonizing the Oceti Sakowin Literary Tradition, American academic Sarah Hernandez (Sicangu Lakota) examines the colonial dismantling of Dakota, Nakota and Lakota intellectual traditions, including “star knowledge through oral storytelling.” She writes that when missionaries arrived in the early nineteenth century, the “linguistic [colonization]” began. Hernandez teaches Native American literature and is the director for the Institute for American Indian Research at the University of New Mexico. She states that “missionary translations of the Dakota language set a dangerous precedent that denigrated Oceti Sakowin star knowledge and supplanted [their] tribal land narratives with new settler-colonial land narratives that ensured that many of our people converted to Christianity and assimilated to the American nation.” Missionaries learned the Dakota language and printed bilingual Dakota-English newspapers which contained “misinterpretation[s] of Dakota origin narratives” and essentially “delegitimize[d] the Oceti Sakowin’s intellectual traditions”—and Christians replaced them with their own. These settler-colonials subsequently “stripped the Dakota nation of 35 million acres of land” and forced them onto a “ten-mile-wide reservation” in Minnesota. Hernandez frequently makes…

GreenWritten and illustrated by Zachari LoganPublished by Radiant PressReview by Shelley A. Leedah$25.00 ISBN 9781998926251 In reading visual artist and poet Zachari Logan’s art/poetry hybrid collection,Green, I was struck by the recurring motif of seeing, and Logan’s recurrentinclusion of the natural world’s diverse creatures and plants. Awe and wonder areintegral elements in this innovative work, a fact that Logan asserts in hisilluminating introduction, which concludes: “[this work] is, ultimately, anexploration of my own enchantment with the world …”. The title also reflectsLogan’s artwork in this collection: the fifty-one pages of drawings—mostly ofleaves, branches and blossoms, and all done “in green ink, pen andpencil”—were completed in a sketchbook he purchased in Venice. Logan’s a well-known Regina, SK artist with a global curriculum vitae. Indeed,prairie gophers, “old wasps and potato bugs” are comfortably juxtaposed againstthe “turtles of Morningside Park” viewed at New York’s “East 96 th Street” and“Vitosha Boulevard’s/bulging trees in Sofia”. Logan was invited to exhibit his workin Bulgaria, and references Bulgarian painter Zlatyu Boyadzhiev (the “̒BulgarianBruegel’”) as well as Caravaggio, El Greco and Canada’s Tom Thomson in thissuperb collection. While employing a range of poetic styles, most of these reflective poems arewritten in free verse and many are narrative, including…

A Home for Hairyby Maureen Ulrich, Illustrated by Brenda BlackburnPublished by Flatlands PressReview by Shelley A. Leedahl$24.99 ISBN 9781069113511 What I know about Saskatchewan’s Maureen Ulrich is that she understands how to engage readers, her genres and subject matter are varied, and her children’s picture books—ie: Sam and the Big Bridge, which I previously reviewed—are delightfully heartwarming. Ulrich, a former teacher, recently released another moving story for young readers. A Home for Hairy is a softcover featuring a foul-breathed cat (Hairy) with low self-esteem, and Alison, a busy healthcare worker and weekend-warrior (aka adventurer) who takes a chance on fostering the scruffy-looking feline at the animal shelter, and welcomes him into her life. Though Hairy’s weekdays are spent inside young Alison’s brick apartment building while she’s at work or reading medical texts and crashing, exhausted on her couch (the illustration for this page shows her asleep on her couch with phone in hand, kitty litter escaping the cat box, and household chores undone), he enjoys “watching the world go by” from his windowsill perch, and during the weekends he and Alison get up to outdoor adventures like hiking, canoeing, and, when winter blows in, snow-boarding. These are daring and questionable…