“As someone who has grown up with abuse and worked with at-risk youth and clients on bail or conditional release inmates before my current career in academia, I found Grabb’s reflections on childhood trauma particularly resonant. His discussions on the long-term impacts of abuse and the challenges of overcoming such trauma are insightful and align with my professional observations.” Amy Tucker reviews Traces of a Boy: Reflections of the Unfathomable by Russ Grabb (Victoria: Tellwell Talent, 2023) $20.99 / 9781779410061
“Aaron Williams was raised in logging camps in BC with an old-time logger for a father and a supportive mother and logging Grandmother Joy doing the raising. He makes good use of his youthful memories to tell us in first-person present tense the workings of various operations that make up the industry.” Ron Verzuh reviews The Last Logging Show: A Forestry Family at the End of an Era by Aaron Williams (Madeira Park: Harbour Publishing, 2024) $24.95 / 9781990776618
“Hunting and fishing for survival is part of life for an increasing number of North Americans. The Port Hardy memoir reminded me that I am not of that ilk and would likely die quickly if marooned on a deserted coastal island in Drouin’s backyard.” Past the End of the Road: A North Island Boyhood by Michel Drouin (Madeira Park: Harbour Publishing, 2024) $24.95 / 9781990776670
“Although Roche has had to constantly encounter resistance to his own appearance by those who consider him initially repellant, it is this very impasse that enables him to teach and learn and develop more immense layers of empathy.” Catherine Owen reviews Standing at the Back Door of Happiness: And How I Unlocked It by David Roche (Madeira Park: Harbour Publishing, 2024) $22.95 / 9781990776762
“Burn, baby, burn, they must have said and this is the fire in Bowering who…is on a feminist re-investigation of the legacy of a lost lady poet.” Linda Rogers reviews More Richly in Earth: A Poet’s Search for Mary MacLeod by Marilyn Bowering (Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2024) $34.95 / 9780228021124
“Author Richard Butler, in his two recent titles, has decided, quite admirably, to describe his own path in addressing reconciliation. He begins Taking Reconciliation Personally upfront about his own settler privilege.” Trevor Marc Hughes reviews Taking Reconciliation Personally (Victoria: A&R Publishing, 2023) $15 / 9798849376998 & I Dare Say…Conversations with Indigeneity by Richard Butler (Victoria: A&R Publishing, 2023) $11 / 9798871999066
“Brauer visited Ireland, accompanied by his former wife Paula, some years ago, and more recently returned on his own in an attempt to ‘find himself.'” Ian Kennedy reviews Lost Between the Stones and the Sea: A Journey of Discovery in Ireland by Chris Brauer (New Denver: Maa Press, 2023) $25.00 / 9781777349745
A poetry collection’s “distinctive power” is founded on a “keen but understated awareness of the interplay between the human world and the natural environment.”—Christopher Levenson reviews Moving to Delilah, by Catherine Owen (Calgary: Freehand Books, 2024) $19.95 / 9781990601583
“The first part of this book is delightful. There’s young Koah with his Portuguese-Canadian father travelling back to his father’s ancestral homeland and imbibing words of wisdom from his father, who introduces him to his grandparents and extended family, all the connections missing from their life together in Victoria, BC.” Sheldon Goldfarb reviews Trust the Bluer Skies: Meditations on Fatherhood by paulo da costa (Regina: University of Regina Press, 2024) $27.95 / 9780889779921
“Her story is not just a recount of a physical undertaking but a profound voyage into personal resilience and discovery.” Amy Tucker reviews Shifting Gears: Coast to Coast on the Trans Am Bike Race by Meaghan Marie Hackinen (Edmonton: NeWest Press, 2023) $23.95 / 9781774390801
“Christina Myers’ new memoir Halfway Home is a raw and riotous account of what it can be like for a woman to move through her life.” Natalie Virginia Lang reviews Halfway Home: Thoughts from Midlife by Christina Myers (Toronto: House of Anansi Press, 2024) $23.99 / 9781487012441
“Far too many non-Indigenous books on the North are presented in the ‘front lines of history’ format, with the authors determined to emphasize their path-breaking work, travels, observations, or experiences. Yukon Wanderlust has none of that self-aggrandizement. Their northern activities are described in a matter-of-fact and unexaggerated fashion.” Ken Coates and William R. Morrison review Yukon Wanderlust by Don Barz (Celtic Frog Publishing, 2021) $29.95 / 9781989092415
“This is a book about uncovering and recovering what it means to come from a still-living matriarchal system. We’re not talking about a flakey New Age reconstruction of an ancient feminist ideal. Think of the rugged Yukon up the road; imagine isolated communities, vast horizons of smallish spruce, pine, aspen, balsam. It’s a place, Knott confirms, where female vision and leadership has survived with dignity and respect for a long time.” Trevor Carolan reviews Becoming A Matriarch: a memoir by Helen Knott (Toronto: Knopf Canada, 2023) $32 / 9780385697774
“Judy LeBlanc has written a courageous memoir through interconnected pieces of prose that honour her Scottish and Coast Salish matrilineal heritage.” Mary Ann Moore reviews Permission to Land: A Memoir of Loss, Discovery, and Identity by Judy LeBlanc (Qualicum Beach: Caitlin Press, 2024) $24.95 / 9781773861357
“Certainly, nature enthusiasts and those who enjoy the spiritual connection to all wildlife will relish this very informative and educational book.” Valerie Green reviews Wildlife Congregations: A Priest’s Year of Gaggles, Colonies and Murders by the Salish Sea by Laurel Dykstra (Surrey: Hancock House Publishers, 2024) $24.95 / 9780888397539
Poet’s third volume delves into the poignant memories of an observant child whose father faced “impossible problems.” —Mary Ann Moore reviews Midway, by Kayla Czaga (Toronto: House of Anansi Press, 2024) $21.99 / 9781487012601
New Westminster writer and essayist Daniel Gawthrop presents a strong argument as to why “now that the Canucks are facing their first legitimate playoff round in nine years, there’s extra motivation to finally bring the Stanley Cup to Vancouver.”
“Why would a woman become a soldier, specifically a male soldier?” Phyllis Reeve reviews Sisters in Arms: Female Warriors from Antiquity to the New Millennium by Julie Wheelwright (Oxford: Osprey Publishing, 2020) $32.50 / 9781472838001
“Much of this memoir is about a daughter’s obsessive search for her father’s secrets in his political, professional, and personal life.” Peter Hay reviews Dreams, Nightmares, and Reality – A Family Memoir by Helga Hatvany (Virginia: Mascot Books, 2022) $23.63 / 9781645439820
“Still, this is a pleasant memoir that teaches about medicine…and it also reveals one man’s journey to neurosurgery, fuelled originally by his interest in the brain.” Sheldon Goldfarb reviews The Tenth Nerve: A Brain Surgeon’s Stories of the Patients Who Changed Him by Chris Honey, MD (Toronto: Vintage Canada, 2023) $23.00 ISBN 9781039001183
