Quietly, precisely, he has created a body of work that is among the greatest to appear in English in the last fifty years.A book-besotted patriarch releases his only son from the obligations of the sea. A father provokes his young son to violence when he reluctantly sells the family horse. A passionate girl who grows up on a nearly deserted island turns into an ever-wistful woman when her one true love is felled by a logging accident. A dying young man listens to his grandmother play the old Gaelic songs on her ancient violin as they both fend off the inevitable. The events that propel MacLeod's stories convince us of the importance of tradition, the beauty of the landscape, and the necessity of memory.

    Growing up a tough, wild tomboy, swimming, fighting, and fishing in a remote village where the land slips into the green ocean on the edge of the world, Lisamarie has always been different. Visited by ghosts and shapeshifters, tormented by premonitions, she can't escape the sense that something terrible is waiting for her. She recounts her enchanted yet scarred life as she journeys in her speedboat up the frigid waters of the Douglas Channel. She is searching for her brother, dead by drowning, and in her own way running as fast as she can toward danger. Circling her brother's tragic death are the remarkable characters that make up her family: Lisamarie's parents, struggling to join their Haisla heritage with Western ways; Uncle Mick, a Native rights activist and devoted Elvis fan; and the headstrong Ma-ma-oo (Haisla for "grandmother"), a guardian of tradition. Haunting, funny, and vividly poignant, Monkey Beach gives full scope to Robinson's startling ability to make bedfellows of comedy and the dark underside of life. Informed as much by its lush living wilderness as by the humanity of its colorful characters, Monkey Beach is a profoundly moving story about childhood and the pain of growing older--a multilayered tale of family grief and redemption.

    . . . Healing is a likely outcome of a book imbued with the righteous anger, compassion and humanity of Swing Low.” —Globe and Mail (Canada)Reverberating with emotional power, authenticity, and insight, Swing Low is Miriam Toews's daring and deeply affecting memoir of her father’s struggle with manic depression in a small Mennonite community in rural Canada. Personal and touching, a stirring counterpart to her novel IrmaVoth and reminiscent of works by Susan Cheever, Gail Caldwell, Mary Karr, and Alexandra Styron, Swing Low is an elegiac ode to a difficult life by an author drawing from the deepest well of insight,craft, and emotion.

    In five decades as a published author he had produced over forty books and received innumerable distinctions, including two Governor General's Awards and the Order of Canada. A hands-on writer who delighted in co-producing specialty publications and small press titles in addition to his major collections with leading publishers, Purdy left a massive and diverse body of work, much of it long unavailable to the public.The Collected Poems, edited by Purdy critic Sam Solecki with the full participation of the author, for the first time brings all of Purdy's poetic writings together in one volume, including all his later books, work previously uncollected from earlier periods as well as several excellent new poems he completed in the months before his death. It is, as he said, everything he wished to be remembered for.

    She and her father share with the other villagers over the winter, then plant the few remaining grains in the spring. A gigantic stalk of magical wheat grows attracting the attention of an equally large and magical stork. The stork flies with Marusia on a magical journey to the prairies, where farmers give Marusia enough wheat for her village.Word of the magical journey reaches a greedy officer, who tricks the stork into retracing the magical journey. But the officer does not understand the meaning of "enough" and his greed leads to his doom. Back in the village, Marusia and her father know they must devise a clever plan to protect their wheat from other greedy soldiers . . . and perhaps from the dictator himself!

    When Thomas inadvertently stumbles upon some American soldiers who are attempting to rob a local store, his quick thinking and his bravery save the day. His actions also catch the eye of the war's most famous officer-Lieutenant James FitzGibbon, leader of the unit dubbed the Green Tigers or "Bully Boys."This, Tommy realizes, is his chance to escape the drudgery of the farm and join the "real"men who are fighting for their freedom. When FitzGibbon takes Tommy under his wing for a time, the young man soon finds that war is both more fascinating and more horrifying than he had ever imagined.Based on the true events surrounding the legendary James FitzGibbon and The Battle of Beaver Dam, The Bully Boys is a moving account of a young man's experience of war.

    Compelling poetry-narrative about the struggle to be an artist and the transformative power of friendship between two extraordinary women painters: Georgia O'Keeffe and Emily Carr.

    Forced to travel through the North American wilderness on the eve of the American Revolution, Mack and Jamie's very lives are on the line. As they try to thwart the evil that stalks them, they meet many brave allies, participate in thrilling political intrigue, and even find love. It is a journey that neither Mack nor Jamie would have chosen, but once set upon its path, their lives will be changed forever. Be sure to read the first book in The Circle of Silver Chronicles, A Circle of Silver, for more tales of the MacNeils' adventures in the New World.

    I don’t think there are any plays that you could call strictly Canadian … What does that phrase mean?”Now, thirty-three years after Canadian directors spoke their minds, or rather shrugged their shoulders at the seeming hopelessness of de-colonizing Canadian theatre, this fourth edition of the “classic” Modern Canadian Plays sets out for us an even broader range of plays than previous editions, outlining a Canadian drama-scene that is far from colonial, inert, middle-class, or middle-aged. Spanning the years from 1967 to 1997, this anthology will likely continue to be the standard anthology for Canadian drama—and not without good reason.Edited by Jerry Wasserman—professor at the University of British Columbia, theatre critic for CBC, and one of Vancouver’s most recurring (and memorable) faces on television— Volume I still contains plays such as George Ryga’s seminal and highly political The Ecstasy of Rita Joe (first performed in 1967, it was described as a “cicatrice” of Canadian society that “showed the bleeding flesh beneath”), as well as Michel Tremblay’s Les Belles-Soeurs (one of the most critically acclaimed plays in Canada, translated from the original, controversial, joual). But more to the point, this edition of Volume I carries with it an even more distinct flavour of adventurousness in its juxtaposition of plays that are strikingly, even wildly, various—plays that can only be said to cohere around the difficulty of amorphous notions such as social justice, cultural belonging, and the existence of a collective past.The plays in this fourth edition of Modern Canadian Plays: Volume I date from 1967 to 1986.

    The story is told in flashbacks, revelations from the disordered mind of the elderly Rose, who, confronting death, has entered into a conversation with God. She revisits her life as an English-born girl growing up in the small town of Cobourg, Ontario. When her father returns from the First World War a burnt-out shell of his former self, her family's reduced circumstances force Rose into domestic service. Shortly after she enters the wealthy Rolyoke household, Rose finds herself married to the scion of the family and transported into a world she struggles to understand.With lyrical, precise prose and haunting images, Richard Scrimger captures the tale of a woman never quite in control of her own destiny, yet determined to deal with all that life presents.