About Jim and Me: a love story by Sally Crooks Published by Benchmark Press Review by Shelley A. Leedahl $14.95 ISBN 978-0-9813243-1-9 Are you interested in recording your personal history and preserving stories about the people and places that have enriched your life? Then perhaps, like Regina writer Sally Crooks, you should write a memoir. Life writing, as it’s sometimes called, has become increasingly popular, and workshops on the genre are frequently led by many of Saskatchewan’s veteran writers. Crooks’ 164-page memoir, About Jim and Me: a love story, traces the author’s experiences as a Scot who immigrated to Regina in 1965 with her beloved husband, Jim, a physiotherapist 16 years her senior – an age difference her family wasn’t pleased about. The book project, Crooks explains, began in 1997, six months after Jim’s death, and was 12 years in the making. The author’s no literary apprentice: she studied the craft at the Sage Hill Writing Experience; participated in writers’ colonies; and has been publishing poetry for years. As her book progressed, various segments appeared in journals, were heard on CBC Radio, and were recognized with Saskatchewan Writers Guild awards. In 2007, Crooks earned a John V. Hicks Manuscript Award….

Sumac’s Red Arms by Karen Shklanka Published by Coteau Books Review by Shelley A. Leedahl $16.95 ISBN 978-1-55050-402-6 Must one live an interesting life in order to write interesting poetry? I would argue that no, this is not a requirement, but it certainly doesn’t hurt. The Vancouver poet, family physician, world traveler, and flamenco dancer, Karen Shklanka, draws from her own rich experience and has much to tell in her first book of poetry, Sumac’s Red Arms. She sets many of her often surprising poems against the various locales she’s called home: Moose Factory, Ontario; Sydney, Australia; Los Angeles; Houston; Salt Spring Island; and Regina. The first poems reveal scenarios from the poet’s medical work in a northern Ontario community. We meet “James,” who “woke bleeding on a battlefield of empties\and limp friends” and has “been sitting all morning with a gun to his head”. And we’re introduced to “The Girl From Attawapiskat”: “She spits on me as they wheel her out on the stretcher”. These are no-nonsense anecdotes, and Shklanka adopts a journalistic style to convey them, thus ensuring that sentimentality does not cloud the telling. In the book’s radically different second section, “The Scent of Cloves,” readers are…

Tuckahoe Slidebottle by Neil McKinnon Published by Thistledown Press Review by Shelley A. Leedahl $18.95 ISBN 978-1-897235-07-02 “The town itself is homeless. It lies on the prairie like a drunk on a sidewalk.” The town is Tuckahoe, a fictional SK community invented by gifted writer Neil McKinnon, and on the strength of these first two sentences, I knew I was going to enjoy his short fiction collection Tuckahoe Slidebottle. McKinnon renders a cast of characters simultaneously outrageous and credible; if Tuckahoe were on a map, readers would be flocking there. I can’t help thinking that the writer wore a smile while penning most of these twenty stories. First, let’s look at the town itself. Tuckahoe’s a place where “Dried potholes slam your teeth as you drive.” There’s the inevitable coffee row, called “The Jury” (“five or six tobacco chewers and sunflower-seed-spitters who met every day to pass judgement on the private lives of others”). And there are wild characters like one-eyed Old Alex, who took off his black eye patch Saturdays and “used a silver dollar to cover the hole where his left eye was supposed to be,” because he believed in dressing up on Saturday nights. Reverend Davies is…

Love and Laughter: A Healing Journey by Catherine Ripplinger Fenwick Printed by St. Peter’s Press Review by Shelley A. Leedahl $21.95 ISBN 1-896971-34-2 The last time I was in McNally Robinson in Saskatoon, I happened past the self-help section and was amazed at its size. I was thinking about this as I read “Crises are part of the human condition …” in the introduction to Catherine Ripplinger Fenwick’s Love and Laughter: A Healing Journey. The book, an expansion on her popular 2004 title, “Healing With Humour,” is in part “a psychological and spiritual first aid kit.” Inside it the Regina author, therapist, and educator offers anecdotes, quotations, poetry, prayers, jokes, affirmations, activities, cartoons, strategies, and information on making humour and hope part of daily life, which results in a healthier and more joyful existence. It is both a “work-book and a play-book,” and for those who need a lift, it could be just what the doctor ordered. After a breast cancer diagnosis in 1990, Ripplinger Fenwick set out on her lifelong goal to write a book, recognizing the importance “healthy humour and hope” would play in her healing journey. She maintains that laughter is important because it “enriches all aspects…

Dinosaur Blackout by Judith Silverthorne Published by Coteau Books Review by Shelley A. Leedahl $8.95 ISBN 978-1-55050-375-3 It’s unusual to begin the fourth novel in a series without having read the three previous. Would the book stand on its own, I wondered? Or would it be like arriving late to a party and feeling lost? I needn’t have worried. Judith Silverthorne, the award-winning Regina author of “Dinosaur Blackout,” has created a time-travel adventure for juvenile readers that definitely pulls its own weight. The rich story concerns young Daniel, who lives on a farm in Saskatchewan’s Frenchman River Valley near Eastend, home of the T.rex Discovery Centre. Daniel’s a budding paleontologist and a great kid. He helps his parents with chores; has forgiven the delinquent and bullying Nelwin brothers; cares for his toddling sister; assists tourists who visit the quarry’s archaeological dig-site and campground; and is a sensitive friend to elderly neighbour\paleontologist Ole Pederson. Daniel enjoys “the best of all worlds … living the rural life and being able to dig for dinosaur bones.” The boy has learned how to use prehistoric foliage to travel back to the Cretaceous Period, where dinosaurs like the Stygimoloch – a fossil of which was…

The Cult of Quick Repair by Dede Crane Published by Coteau Books Review by Shelley A. Leedahl $18.95 ISBN 9-781550-503920 There’s a marvelous short story in Victoria, BC writer Dede Crane’s collection, The Cult of Quick Repair, about the bizarre circumstances that follow after a man’s one night-stand – the “act” is committed in his marriage bed – with a woman met at a staff party. Called “Raising Blood,” the tale begins with the man’s realization that a menstrual blood stain has been left on the $500 “pure Egyptian cotton” sheets his wife’s just purchased, and when he rinses them in hot water instead of cold, the stain, naturally, sets. The wife will be returning within hours from a business trip, and the race to erase the evidence is on. In the delicious romp that follows, the husband attempts to “raise his own blood” to explain the stain. One thing he tries is “a good hard trip up the stairs.” Crane writes: He “knelt down on the cement landing, and began to draw his knee back and forth. Scrape, scrape, scrape, he thought positively …” But this doesn’t work. An electric knife handily does the trick, but lands him in…

Terminal Moraine by Ian LeTourneau Published by Thistledown Press Review by Shelley A. Leedahl $12.95 ISBN 978-1-897235-53-9 In 2008, Thistledown Press celebrated the release of its 10th New Leaf Editions Series of poetry books by first-time authors, and what a celebration it was. At the launch — arguably among SK’s top literary events of the year — one of four poets on stage was Ian LeTourneau, a former Maritimer now living in Athabasca AB. With new book in hand, LeTourneau transported listeners with the unique music only a finely-tuned poem can make. Terminal Moraine is a landmark book. It entertains and ferries readers to the “otherworld” poetry inhabits, but it could also be well-used in writing workshops, as LeTourneau’s poems have much to teach us. Reversals (ie: the tide, time, memory), renewals, and re-ordering predominate, but within these themes there exists great diversity in subject, tone, and form. Aside from the free verse favoured by many contemporary poets, LeTourneau also incorporates sonnets, odes (ie: “Fireplace” and “Bicycle”), a paradelle, a triolet, and couplets. There are translations (from the French); poems inspired by other poets; by photographs; music; landscapes; family; and friends. More specifically, the found poem, “Wind Farm,” credits the…

If readers are at all familiar with Saskatchewan literature, they are familiar with Gary Hyland. His list of awards – literary, teaching, community-based – is long and impressive, including, recently, the Book of the Year and the Poetry Award (2008 Saskatchewan Book Awards) for “Love of Mirrors: Poems New and Selected”. With “You,” however, Hyland fans can expect a somewhat different voice than in earlier publications.

Winnipeg writer David Elias is making a name for himself as a writer of increasingly interesting books. Coteau Books recently published his fourth, the novel “Waiting for Elvis,” and because I was ardently cheering for these hardluck characters, I had a hard time putting the book down.

It’s clear that the poet also keeps one eye on the larger world, fraught as it is with economic crises, ecological issues, and war. Safarik, then, is the best kind of seer