Hollywood in the Klondike: Dawson City’s Great Film Find by Michael Gates Madeira Park, Harbour Publishing, 2022 $34.95 / 9781550179965 Reviewed by Ron Verzuh * All that Flickered: The glitter of gold competed with the flicker of silent movies in 1890s Klondike You can almost taste the rotgut liquor and smell the sweat, cheap cigars…
Read more 1553 All that flickered
The Shuswap Country by Erskine Burnett, edited by Jim Cooperman and with a foreword by Mark Forsythe Salmon Arm: 55 Creative Group and Hucul Printing, 2022 $25.00 / 9780994990259 Reviewed by Sage Birchwater * The Shuswap Country is a history-buff’s delight waiting to pique your curiosity about life in the Shuswap during the 1930s and…
Read more 1552 Bard of the Shuswap
The Day the Pirates Went Mad by Trevor Atkins, illustrated by Jon Merchant Coquitlam: Silverpath Publishing, 2021 $14.95 / 9781989459027 Reviewed by Cassidy Lea All royalties are donated in support of BC Children’s Hospital * It’s the early 1700s and eleven-year-old Emma Sharpe is in a difficult situation. Her parents have been sent to prison…
Read more 1551 Emma and the pirate treasure
An Accidental Odyssey by kc dyer Toronto: Penguin Random House Canada (Berkley), 2021 $22.00 / 9780593102060 Reviewed by Zoe McKenna * Though Homer’s Odyssey is a staple of the literary canon and serves as a foundation for countless interpretations and revisions, kc dyer’s An Accidental Odyssey rejects all the predictability of this territory. Instead, An…
Read more 1550 Epic quest, new narrative
The Resistance Dilemma: Place-Based Movements and the Climate Crisis by George Hoberg Toronto: Penguin Random House Canada (The MIT Press), 2021 $54.00 / 9780262543088 Reviewed by Stephen Bocking * The climate crisis demands that we break our fossil fuel habit. This implies an energy revolution, rewiring society to rely on renewable electricity. New technologies can…
Read more 1549 Clarifying climate policy
Up the Coast: One family’s wild life in the forests of British Columbia by Kathryn Willcock Edmonton: NeWest Press, 2022 $24.95 / 9781774390511 Reviewed by Dave Flawse * Kathryn Willcock’s rustic childhood summers spent in a remote British Columbia logging camp “with endless forests, a rugged coastline, and not much else,” provide the staple ingredients…
Read more 1548 Loggers, rhozzums, & grizzlies
China’s Grandmothers. Gender, Family and Ageing from Late Qing to Twenty-First Century by Diana Lary Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2022 $33.95 / 9781009064781 Reviewed by Isabel Nanton * In a China-West binary, Diana Lary, Professor Emerita of Modern Chinese History at the University of British Columbia, blends in her latest — and she says her…
Read more 1547 Grannies glue the text
The Rooming House: The West Coast in the Seventies by Michael Kluckner Vancouver: Midtown Press, 2022 $19.95 / 9781988242460 Reviewed by Valerie Green * Michael Kluckner has skillfully managed to capture the free spirit, free love era of the late sixties and early seventies in this captivating story of lost youth trying to find their…
Read more 1546 Kitsilano flashback
Peyakow: Reclaiming Cree Dignity by Darrel J. McLeod Madeira Park: Douglas & McIntyre, 2021 $29.95 / 9781771622318 Reviewed by Heather Simeney MacLeod * Darrel McLeod attended the University of British Columbia where he obtained two degrees – a Bachelor of Arts in French Literature and another in Education. Prior to becoming a writer, McLeod worked…
Read more 1545 Cree identity in exile
Jonas and the Mountain: A Metaphysical Love Story by Janis Harper Fort Lauderdale, FL: Sacred Stories Publishing, 2021. For more information about purchasing the book in Canada, contact Janis Harper $20.99 CDN / 9781945026805 Reviewed by Margaret Miller * An eastern mystic and western psychic walk into a bar… Not too much surprises me these…
Read more 1544 A fascinating dance of ideas
Two books reviewed by Sheldon Goldfarb: Gidal: The Unusual Friendship of Yosef Wosk and Tim Gidal, Letters and Photos by Alan Twigg (editor) Madeira Park: Douglas & McIntyre, 2022 $39.95 / 9781771623025 * Memories of Jewish Poland: The 1932 Photographs of Nachum Tim Gidal by Yosef Wosk and Nachum Tim Gidal Jerusalem: Gefen Books, 2020…
Read more 1543 Photos & letters of Tim Gidal
Dissenting Traditions: Essays on Bryan D. Palmer, Marxism, and History by Sean Carleton, Ted McCoy, and Julia Smith (editors) Edmonton: Athabasca University Press, 2021 $37.99 / 9781771993111 Reviewed by Dennis Pilon Dissenting Traditions is available for free download as a PDF, or for purchase as a print or ebook, from the AU Press website *…
Read more 1542 A class war of words
Fair Days by David Essig Nanaimo: Peregrin Books, 2022 $20.00 / 9780992055714 Available here by mail order Reviewed by Carol Matthews * Sometimes when we listen to a song, we wonder about the story that might have inspired it. In his new book, Fair Days, singer and songwriter David Essig has written thirteen stories that…
Read more 1541 Essig opens up his songs
Mad Honey by Katie Welch Hamilton, ON: Wolsak & Wynn, 2022 $22.00 / 9781989496527 Reviewed by Jessica Poon * I have always found magic realism to be a mildly confusing term and no Googling will assuage this befuddlement. Is it simply literature with elements of sci-fi or miscellaneous otherworldliness that refuses to be genre fiction?…
Read more 1540 Small words, magic bees
The Dead of False Creek: A Journal Through Time Mystery by Sarah M. Stephen Vancouver: WZE Press, 2021 $14.99 / 9781777833015 Reviewed by Dennis Wilkinson * This is not my genre! I’m into history, not time-bending fictional murder mysteries. Why then am I going to the trouble of reading and reviewing this book? The answer…
Read more 1539 When False Creek was mudflats
The Ghosts of Paris by Tara Moss Toronto: HarperCollins Canada, 2022 $24.99 / 9781443461252 Reviewed by Myshara Herbert-McMyn * Many of us have wished to travel into the past, whether for specific reasons or to experience a time vastly different from our own. Of course, historical fiction remains the most efficient and inexpensive way to…
Read more 1538 Finding Jack Rake
Okanagan Women’s Voices: Syilx and settler writing and relations, 1870s to 1960s by Jeannette Armstrong, Lally Grauer, and Janet MacArthur (editors) Penticton: Theytus Books, 2021 $34.95 / 9781926886527 Reviewed by Ken Favrholdt * Three women authors have compiled and written about seven other female writers, creating a unique and important tribute to the early voices…
Read more 1537 syilx and Okanagan women
Fight or Submit: Standing Tall in Two Worlds by Ronald M. Derrickson Toronto: ECW Press, 2020 $34.95 / 9781770415669 Reviewed by David Milward * Sometimes there is just no winning for Indigenous peoples. If Indigenous peoples remain in poverty with no meaningful economy to sustain themselves, it becomes easy for non-Indigenous peoples to label them…
Read more 1536 Setting the record straight
Queasy: a wannabe writer’s bumpy journey through England in the ’70s by Madeline Sonik Vancouver: Anvil Press, 2022 $20.00 / 9781772141894 Reviewed by Theo Dombrowski * “There be dragons,” warn words in the corners of some old maps. The warning is really, of course, an invitation both to the intrepid to investigate remote lands and…
Read more 1535 An English chambermaid
Red Fox Road by Frances Greenslade Toronto: Penguin Random House Canada (Puffin), 2022 (hardcover, 2020) $11.99 / 9780735267831 Reviewed by Cassidy Lea * If you ever got lost in the woods, what would you do? What would you need to survive? An axe, maybe some fishing gear, enough dehydrated food to feed you for a…
Read more 1534 Finding Francie Fox