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Sailing in Circles, Goin’ Somewhere Not Your Typical Boat Story
Publisher: Nimbus Publishing$22.95Not all dreams have happy endings. Sailing in Circles, Goin’ Somewhere is the funny, bittersweet memoir of a Prince Edward Island man who, over seven years, builds a classic 1930s wooden sailboat and, in 2004, attempts to circumnavigate eastern North America. The author leaves a small fishing port on the Island and tracks along the rugged coast, up the St. Lawrence River, and through the Great Lakes. Alone, he encounters heavy fog, near-collisions with freighters, mechanical breakdowns, enormous seas, several brushes with disaster, and even a hostile reception at one French-speaking port. He meets odd and curious people. It all comes to an inglorious and mundane end when the author and his boat, the Arja D., are stuck in, of all places, Peoria, Illinois. Was it worth it? Maybe.
Written by Finley Martin, a respected Island fiction writer, this finely crafted and humorous book will appeal to adventurers, sailors, and lovers of a good yarn.
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Better Off Dead Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder and the Canadian Armed Forces
Publisher: Nimbus Publishing$19.95Fred Doucette always wanted to be a soldier. In the 1960s he joined the Canadian Armed Forces and served in Cyprus in the 1970s and ’80s and Bosnia in the 1990s. When he returned home to New Brunswick in 1999 after his last overseas tour, he was diagnosed with severe chronic post-traumatic stress disorder. Eventually released from the army, Fred found a position with the Operational Stress Injury Social Support (OSISS) program, where he supported serving soldiers and veterans for ten years.
Better Off Dead chronicles Fred’s efforts in helping to rehabilitate and support soldiers and veterans suffering from what the military terms “operational stress injuries.” We meet Ted, saved from a suicide attempt by a timely phone call; Bob, at wit’s end and reluctantly seeking help to overcome severe PTSD; Roger, caught in a cycle of violence and drug and alcohol abuse; and Jane, diagnosed with PTSD after having been sexually assaulted while on a tour of duty in Afghanistan. These accounts are raw, desperate, and often angry, but as Doucette shows, there is hope and real progress for those able to obtain proper diagnosis and treatment. Includes a colour insert with 15 photos.
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Wayfarer
Publisher: Islandport Press$19.95James S. Rockefeller Jr. lived a life of adventure that took him from Maine to Tahiti to Norway and back again. He recalls the deep loss and turns of fortune through his life, including his relationship with author Margaret Wise Brown, and his enduring passion for planes, boats, and exploration.
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Whatever It Takes
Publisher: Islandport Press$19.95May and Jim Davidson spent sixty-eight years together sharing an unbreakable love of Maine and a relentless drive to do “whatever it takes” to find success and happiness. After falling in love as teenagers, they built their first house using twenty dollars worth of lumber and optimistically started creating the life of their dreams. However, they soon learned that optimism alone wouldn’t sustain them. They lobstered, fished, farmed sheep, started a lobster trap sawmill, and criss-crossed the country as long haul truckers. And when they eventually collapsed into debt and uncertainty while trying to raise thousands of chickens, they regrouped and fought their way out again by developing a unique gift product inspired by the sea. May Davidson’s story is a decades-long tapestry of adventure, brutally hard work, light-heartedness, and risk taking. It offers a wider view of Maine during the last half of the twentieth century, a shared history between the farmers, lobstermen, truckers, and entrepreneurs who have witnessed tremendous change in their lifetimes. It’s a familiar tale to every reader who is determined to live a rich life despite obstacles–a story of the hard work and moxie that’s required to pursue a happy life.
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The Birth and the Babyhood of the Telephone A Talk to Telephone Pioneers by The Other Man on the Line
Publisher: Breton Books$16.95While Alexander Graham Bell invented the telephone, Thomas A. Watson was the craftsman who gave the telephone life. Model after model, night and day, together they battled disappointment, and were spurred on by hints of success. Then in 1875, Watson’s hands created the first telephone that actually carried the human voice.
Yet the world barely remembers Thomas Watson beyond the first sentence transmitted over the telephone: “Mr. Watson—come here—I want you.”
In this classic book, restored and expanded, The Birth and Babyhood of the Telephone delivers both a detailed record of the development of the first telephone as it also reveals the very human story of the relationship between Alexander Graham Bell and Thomas Watson. We see the younger Watson grow up through the guidance of the better educated and more sophisticated A. G. Bell, as Watson receives books, and lessons in elocution and even table manners.
This moving first-person account keeps alive the story of a relationship between two brilliant, impassioned men who changed the world.
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Deep Water Pearls A Collection of Women’s Memoir
Editor: Kathleen HamiltonPublisher: Acorn Press$22.95Thirteen writers dive into the deep emotional waters of their lives to write their most personal, honest stories. In doing so they transform the grit of female experience into pearls of truth and beauty.
Guided by memoir coach and editor Kathleen Hamilton, the writers reveal the most intimate turning points in their lives, memories deeply charged with meaning, moments after which their lives were never the same.
The stories are diverse: we meet a PEI farm girl exploring her early intuitive knowings, a tattooed millennial struggling with PTSD, a mature academic rebounding from the betrayal of her marriage, and a bride whose wedding day is a triumph over a treacherous past.
In The Strength it Took to Ditch You, a woman reveals her years in an abusive same-sex relationship. High School Reunion is set in Unit 9, a psych ward in Charlottetown. In The Waiting Place, a young mother from western PEI explores the meaning of home.
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We Keep A Light
$15.95In We Keep A Light, Evelyn M. Richardson describes how she and her husband bought tiny Bon Portage Island and built a happy life there for themselves and their three children. On an isolated lighthouse station off the southern tip of Nova Scotia, the Richardsons shared the responsibilities and pleasures of island living, from carrying water and collecting firewood to making preserves and studying at home. The close-knit family didn’t mind their isolation, and found delight in the variety and beauty of island life.
We Keep A Light is much more than a memoir. It is an exquisitely written, engrossing record of family life set against a glowing lighthouse, the enduring shores of Nova Scotia, and the ever-changing sea.
