cabin fever
anik see
“I think of those days at the cabin, of arriving again after a long time away, of Gerry and Gerry’s death, of how the landscape and the light became etched into my memory. Of generosity and the smell of Max’s cabin — that old book smell that verged on musty, but that had a crisp quality to it — of the xylothek and Mercator’s map, and meteors that lit up the sky.”
When Clea Barnes’ parents die, she abandons her family’s remote cabin for years, until an experience on the eve of the millennium forces her to return. What she finds surprises her: old friends and wisdom, tragedy and joy, peace and disquiet, a place rich with its own secrets, as well as an apprehension of what’s lost as the area’s residents migrate to cities.
A Sebaldian homage to landscape, spanning events of the millennium, 9/11, and beyond, Cabin Fever examines the current human condition as a result of the abandonment of the slower and thoughtful measure found in isolated places. The themes of Anik See’s Saudade are extended in Cabin Fever through a series of suites of digression and meditation, asking essential questions. Can we go home? How can we live with less? Are utopias possible in the shadow of this brave new world? And how do we treat each other in the face of global chaos and uncertainty?
Recent praise:
“Anik See negotiates the intricacies of the adult world with an unerring instinct for what is true about our lives and ourselves. She is a real writer and I can’t wait for more.” - Michael Crummey
“Intelligent, fluid and harrowing.” - Mark Anthony Jarman
“Disturbingly brilliant... fresh and utterly original.” - Jim Harrison
Anik See is a Canadian documentary maker and writer living in The Netherlands. She is the author of A Fork in the Road, Saudade: The Possibilities of Place and postcard and other stories. Her writing has appeared in Brick, The Walrus, Prairie Fire, The Fiddlehead, Geist, grain, National Geographic, The National Post, and Toronto Life, and has been nominated for numerous awards. Her prize-winning documentaries can be heard on the BBC and CBC, among other broadcasters. She is co-founder and publisher of Fish Gotta Swim Editions.
ISBN 978-0-9780054-9-8 (paperback), 264 pages
$25 CAD, plus shipping
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susanna hall, her book
jennifer falkner
Alice, bursting outside, startles her out of her reverie.
“What's all this noise?” Susanna casts an anxious glance at an upstairs window, at battlements of grey clouds gathering along the gables. The summer has been challenging so far. So much rain. But at least the slugs and mosquitoes thrive.
She says breathlessly, “The Queen! The Queen is here, Mistress Hall. The Queen of England. To see you!”
It’s July, 1643, and Susanna Hall has just been told a visitor has arrived at New Place, Stratford-upon-Avon. Susanna, the widow of physician John Hall, and the eldest daughter of William Shakespeare, has reasons for not wanting to host Henrietta Maria, wife of Charles I. A civil war is raging, with skirmishes fought close to Stratford, and an injured boy lies under Susanna’s roof, needing her skills as healer. Where should she place her loyalties? Who can Susanna trust in order to keep her patient and her family safe? In this taut novella, Jennifer Falkner creates a richly imagined tapestry in which ghosts hover, plants are gathered, potions are concocted, secrets are hidden, and we are led through a moment in history, personal and prophetic, and potent as any in recent fiction.
Jennifer Falkner (she/her) is a short story writer living in Ottawa, Canada, on the traditional, unceded territory of the Algonquin Anishinaabe First Nation. Her stories have placed first in the HWA/Dorothy Dunnett Short Story Competition, the Retreat West Short Story Prize and the Little Bird Short Story Contest. Her work has appeared in several literary journals, including untethered, Agnes and True, and The Stonecoast Review, among others.
“…a gorgeous and haunting novella…” - Kerry Clare
ISBN 978-0-9780054-8-1 (paperback)
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WANDA
barbara lambert
EVA HAS BEEN WISHING FOR A FRIEND. Now this girl is staring at her expectantly, with alarming eyes bright as marbles. She does a stumpy twirl-around, holds out a hand. “So here’s me,” she says, “I’m Wanda.”
The arrival of this strange new friend, a refugee from the London blitz, fills all the empty corners of Eva’s life — except for the fear that Wanda will desert her when she discovers that Eva’s family has been branded as German enemy aliens.
Set in the dry Okanagan landscape at the start of World War II, in a time when suspicion is rife and Canadians of varied origins are subjected to the steeping prejudices of a small Interior town, Wanda revolves around one young, idealistic family of artists and orchardists, each of whom must navigate the complexities war has brought into their lives. But most of all it is the story of Eva, fragile, stubborn, and unrepentant – compelled towards truths that tempt her from childish innocence. Wanda deftly captures the magic of childhood, even as it explores issues of guilt, innocence, shame and the lasting shadows of war.
Barbara Lambert is a Canadian writer with roots in British Columbia’s Okanagan valley, where her artist parents settled in the 1920s. She has published 3 books, most recently The Whirling Girl. The title novella of her collection, A Message for Mr. Lazarus, won the Malahat Review Novella Prize; and the collection itself won the Danuta Gleed Award and was shortlisted for the Ethel Wilson Prize in 2001. Her short stories have appeared in many publications, including The Journey Prize Anthology. She now divides her time between Vancouver and her family's Okanagan cherry farm.
“...beautifully crafted, complex and satisfying...” -Eva Stachniak, author of The Chosen Maiden
ISBN 978-0-9780054-7-4 (paperback)
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WINTER WREN
theresa kishkan
Winter Wren is a novella set on a beach west of Victoria, B.C. in 1974. Its central character, Grace Oakden, has returned to Canada after attending art school in France and making a life for herself as a painter. She becomes involved with the former owner of her house, a man whose father was an artefact collector in the tradition of Charles Newcombe and who now lives in a care home for the elderly, and she also begins an affair with a local potter who studied for a time with Bernard Leach in England. These two men, each in his own way, and each unknowingly, challenge her to rise to the task of finding an artistic language to examine her place and her history, to learn how to paint the view at dusk.
Theresa Kishkan is the critically acclaimed author of 13 books of poetry, fiction, and non-fiction, most recently Euclid’s Orchard and another novella, Patrin (Mother Tongue Publishing, 2017 and 2015, respectively). She lives near Pender Harbour, northwest of Vancouver.
"A phenomenal read." - Book Addiction
"[A] beautiful meditation of transformation and of place..." - Kerry Clare
ISBN 978-0-9780054-5-0 (paperback)
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TOWER
Frances Boyle
Tower is Frances Boyle’s modern-day retelling of the tale of Rapunzel. Set in the Gulf Islands off the west coast of Canada, it begins in the idyllic 1970s and unfolds over decades and generations to the present-day.
The temz review literary journal called it "honest, insightful, and beautifully written, with the kind of tight execution to which many novellas aspire, but which few achieve", and the Ottawa Review of Books called Frances "a writer to reckon with".
The night the Mounties came, my sleep had already been disturbed by a small but insistent wail coming from the garden below my bedroom window.
There was a baby in my cabbage patch.
And so begins the tale of Arlys, who grows vegetables and roses, and Chicory, the baby she adopts and nurtures in a farmhouse on a small coastal island. Can she keep Chicory safe forever or will the girl eventually fall in love with a damaged prince, will the carefully constructed edifice of motherhood and care survive or collapse, taking the roses down with it? Is there a happy ending for Chicory, for Torque, the edgy street artist who makes dark and beautiful murals in chalk, only to see them wash away in rain? Tower is a modern fable, an intricate tapestry of longing and danger, its pattern shifting over time and place, the tendrils ready to wrap us into its story.
Frances Boyle is the author of one previous book, the poetry collection Light-carved Passages, as well as a chapbook, Portal Stones, which won the Tree Reading Series chapbook contest. Her writing has also received the Diana Brebner Prize and awards in The Great Canadian Literary Hunt. She has published work in literary magazines throughout Canada and in the United States as well as in anthologies with themes as varied as the films of Alfred Hitchcock and form poetry. Raised on the Canadian prairies, Frances lived on the West Coast for 12 years and now makes her home in Ottawa with her partner, Tim Stanley; they have two grown daughters and a large standard poodle who believes he is a lap dog.
“Frances Boyle has the clear eye of a poet, along with a discerning ear for dialogue and a fine sense of story-telling. Combining these writerly qualities with careful understanding and compassion for her characters, she brings them vividly to life in this moving rendition of an old tale. Brilliant!” - Isabel Huggan
ISBN 978-0-9780054-6-7 (paperback)
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