We Keep a Light – Nimbus Classic
Publisher: Nimbus Publishing$19.95In 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.
The Perfect Day and Other Stories
Publisher: Pottersfield Press$21.95Favourably reviewing Harry Bruce’s Down Home: Notes of a Native Son more than 30 years ago, a critic in The Globe and Mail reported that it was from this book he’d learned that Nova Scotians often judged people or things on an ascending scale of merit that went like this: “good, some good, right some good, or right some Jesus good.” Down Home, he decided, was “right some good.”
Other critics have been less reticent. Bruce’s writing has inspired them to call him no less than “a consummate storyteller”; to marvel over his “magnetic style and marvelous command of the language”; to declare his prose “highly entertaining and gloriously informative”; and to insist that “only the spiritually dead or terminally obtuse could fail to come away from it richer for the experience.” About one collection of his works a reviewer decided, “We are obviously in the hands of a master.” Surely a master is right some Jesus good.
And now, The Perfect Day and Other Stories offers the best of Bruce’s best essays. From the sweet pain of first love and leaving home to the horrors of killer wasps, bloodthirsty flies, and marauding mice, from the relief experienced in every outhouse in the pines to the joy resounding from neighbourhood curling on a Scottish laird’s frozen pond, from the magic mist that sneaks into a ghost village on an abandoned island off Lunenburg to the sheer glory that parades of tall ships grant to great ports around the world, from fogs, bats, cats, and coyotes to the whales, thrones, stags, and steeples that make Atlantic Canada unique…they’re all here, and more, in Harry’s latest collection.
No Thanks, I Want to Walk Two Months on Foot Around New Brunswick and the Gaspé
Publisher: Pottersfield Press$21.95“I found that the landscape had a deep effect on my mood: cliffs towering above, a narrow strip of earth to follow, the vast ocean opening up before me. I felt changed.”
After completing a 3,000-kilometre hike of coastal Nova Scotia and making a number of dramatic changes in her life, Emily Taylor Smith is compelled to undertake another Maritime journey on foot, this time following the coastline of New Brunswick and the Gaspé all the way to Quebec City.
She plans a solitary trip, searching for life lessons along the way and carrying everything she needs with her on her back. Emily severely underestimates the Fundy Footpath, struggles to communicate in French, nearly throws in the towel at the tip of Kouchibouguac Park, and survives a sleepless night in a collapsed tent on the windy Gaspé shore.
What she doesn’t count on is the support which appears daily in the form of roadside messages, random gifts of ice cream, generous postmistresses and flag collectors, and help that comes from within. The challenging regimen of 45 kilometres a day for two months is transcended by a growing spiritual bond with the landscape that keeps her moving forward.
Halifax and Me
Publisher: Pottersfield Press$21.95In 1971, Harry Bruce, recognized as one of Canada’s top non-fiction writers, lost his mind—according to his peers—when he left bustling, lucrative Toronto and moved his family to the tough little seaport of Halifax.
Harry was already acquainted with Halifax; at eighteen, he lived at HMCS Stadacona as an officer-cadet in the Royal Canadian Navy. He joined the navy chiefly to lose his virginity. “For what finer way could there be to serve queen and country?” Though he did not achieve his goal, that summer gave him his first whiffs of the port whose magnetism he would one day find irresistible.
He settled in Halifax—and he moved away. Several times, in fact, even going as far as Vancouver. Yet he kept returning to Halifax. Each time he found it had changed for the better and was a little less like the “racist, boring, City of the Living Dead” that comedian Cathy Jones called it forty years ago, and a little more like the lively, welcoming, cosmopolitan town he hoped it would be.
For the past fifty years, Harry Bruce has been working as what The Concise Oxford Companion to Canadian Literature calls “an impassioned advocate for the Maritimes and an essayist of great charm and perception.” Here, writing more charmingly and perceptively than ever, he celebrates the blossoming of Halifax as “A City to Dance In.”
Teaching at the Top of the World
Publisher: Pottersfield Press$21.95This memoir is a love story of sorts that expresses great respect for Inuit people, their culture, and the magnificent Arctic landscape. It is told from the perspective of a non-Inuit woman, who has lived and worked within an isolated, cross-cultural environment. Odette and YoAnne learned quickly that to be successful northern teachers, you must enter into the lives of your students and their rich culture in meaningful and significant ways. Outside of their regular school day, they enthusiastically participated in community activities; they ate Northern foods; they snowmobiled out onto the land to take part in camping, fishing, and hunting activities; and they learned as much Inuktitut language as they could. In turn, the author and her partner were warmly welcomed and they were deeply touched by their complete acceptance as a lesbian couple in these remote places.
Memoir Conversations and Craft
Publisher: Pottersfield Press$21.95Memoir opens doors we could never ordinarily walk through—into the lives of Olympians, queens, victims of war and other tragedies, teenage rock stars, former streetwalkers or geishas—along with the doors to the lives of extraordinary/ordinary people. The best memoirs are maps of the heart and mind, and Marjorie Simmins invites you to explore the map of your own life. Here are the probing questions and dynamic writing ideas, coupled with inspirational interviews with best-selling memoirists, to light your own imagination afire. How do you access the details of your earliest memories, make them immediate and dramatic? How do you drive the story forward? How do you make a stranger care about your life?
Memoir: Conversations and Craft is intended for any reader or writer who is fascinated by the renegade memoir form—personal life stories that demand to be read, refuse to be forgotten. Whether you wish to compile memories from childhood to share with grandchildren, or whether you burn with the makings of a literary memoir, this reflection on writing can galvanize you.
Donna Morrissey, Linden MacIntyre, Plum Johnson, Lawrence Hill, Edmund Metatawabin, Diane Schoemperlen, and Claire Mowat—some of Canada’s top fiction and non-fiction writers—speak with candour, humour, and compassion about their journeys to memoir. Often touching, always helpful and frank, the interviews cover a broad spectrum of the writing experience. The time to write a memoir is always now—and the benefits are transformative.
An Imperfect Healer The Gifts of a Medical Life
Publisher: Pottersfield Press$19.95“She said she would pray for me. I asked her why. She said she prayed for many people. I asked her why. Stooped and frail, she wore the lassitude of ninety-seven years as transparently as she wore the pale blue wool sweater that seemed to grow from her shoulders. I had seen her before in the hurried and harried rounds I make here. My progress notes say repeatedly, ‘No problems reported.’ But today I took the time to listen.”
Every patient tells a story. Drawing on a forty-year medical career, Dr. Larry Kramer has written about some of the people he has met along the way. The stories chronicle love and loss, tragedy and comedy, and empathetically observe patients who live and die, some with courage and some with fear. These accounts frame the story of one physician’s life and how it was shaped, changed, and guided by those he encountered every day. The young, the old, the happy, the sad, and the suffering all bring gifts beyond measure.
Narratives of medicine are increasingly recognized as key components of the therapeutic experience. The Journal of the American Medical Association suggested in 2001, “Narrative medicine can examine and illuminate four of medicine’s central narrative situations: physician and patient, physician and self, physician and colleagues, and physician and society.” It enables patients, physicians, and others to be moved by stories of illness. Thus we share a common humanity. We all have stories. Our heroes are among us.
Through Sunlight and Shadows
Publisher: Pottersfield Press$19.95Through Sunlight and Shadows is an autobiographical novel about a young boy set in the small New Brunswick town of Bannonbridge in the 1940s and 1950s. The story is told from the perspective of an older man, Walt Macbride, a character well known to readers of other Raymond Fraser novels.
The Other Side of the Sun The True Story of One Refugee’s Journey
Publisher: Pottersfield Press$21.95As one of the boat people refugees, Thien escaped war-torn Vietnam on a harrowing journey that landed him in a Malaysian refugee camp. Thien Tang had an ordinary childhood living in South Vietnam until it became a Communist state. His father feared persecution of his family and sent his fourteen-year-old son into hiding for over a year. Upon his return, Thien attended a local high school and found a classmate sweetheart. Life once again was good. But it wasn’t meant to last. Thien was forced to go back into hiding again with no hope of return. Like thousands of others, he fled Vietnam on a crowded boat in search of a new life. But first he had to cross the treacherous South China Sea to reach Malaysia.
Thien’s ship was attacked by pirates and shot at by police. On land, he and his fellow refuges were jailed, starved, and beaten, but survival only brought on tougher challenges. The soldiers forced them at gunpoint back into their damaged boat to be towed to sea. He sought asylum in the United States but found the refuge he was seeking in Charlottetown, Prince Edward Island, where he lives today.
Memories on the Bounty A Story of Friendship, Love, and Adventure
Publisher: Nimbus Publishing$19.95In 1960, Roy Boutilier and twenty-four fellow Nova Scotians set sail for Tahiti aboard the newly built replica sailing ship Bounty. The ship stayed in Tahiti for almost a year while MGM Studios filmed the epic historical drama Mutiny on the Bounty, starring Marlon Brando.
Roy’s year on Bounty and his experiences in Tahiti are themselves the stuff of movies. But it took a diagnosis of Alzheimer’s disease for Roy and his long-time friend, Janet Sanford, to realize that a fascinating story would be lost if someone didn’t capture those memories.
And so began a series of Monday-morning meetings as Roy and the author embarked on a race against time. Memories on the Bounty goes far beyond re-telling Roy’s story; it explores the boundaries of memory, the challenges of storytelling, the pain of saying goodbye, and the enduring bonds of friendship.
With dozens of never-before-seen photos from Bounty’s maiden voyage and her time in Tahiti, Memories on the Bounty is a touching story of adventure, love, and loss.
Senior Moment Navigating the Challenges of Caring for Mom
Publisher: Nimbus Publishing$22.95Monica Graham got her first inkling that her eighty-nine-year-old mother might not be able to continue living on her own when she coated chicken breasts with dishwashing liquid for dinner. It was an easy mistake—the yellow detergent lived right beside the olive oil on the kitchen counter. Graham could easily have done the same thing herself, she thought.
But as her visit with her mom in Corner Brook, Newfoundland, progressed, Graham—who lives in Pictou, Nova Scotia—began to recognize that her mother had been successfully hiding increasingly apparent signs that her memory was failing; she wasn’t getting by as well as she had been letting on. So began the arduous process of finding and securing a safe place for her mother to live—and of clearing out several decades’ worth of belongings.
Part memoir, part cautionary tale, part how-to guide, Senior Moment offers insight and practical guidance for Atlantic Canadians on how to usher a loved one into the world of continuing care. With wit, wisdom, and a dose of whimsy, author Monica Graham explores the inevitable hurdles of caring for our elders.
Clary Croft My Charmed Life in Music, Art, and Folklore
Publisher: Nimbus Publishing$22.95“I have led a charmed life. I know that, and I am grateful every day.”— Clary Croft
Folklorist, recording artist, actor, songwriter, broadcaster, storyteller, author, archivist, artisan, and designer: over a career spanning more than fifty years, Clary Croft has woven the threads of his vast array of talents into a tapestry that has enveloped the life of an artist, and in the process he’s become a household name in Nova Scotia and beyond.
With charming humility and cheeky humour, Clary shares memories and anecdotes of an eclectic career including his work with The Privateers, Sherbrooke Village, Singalong Jubilee, Neptune Theatre, CBC Mainstreet and, perhaps most importantly, his collaboration with eminent folklorist Helen Creighton.
Featuring a foreword by writer, broadcaster, and former co-host of CBC’s Singalong Jubilee Jim Bennet, and with more than fifty images in both colour and black and white, Clary Croft: My Charmed Life in Music, Art, and Folklore is an inspiring and entertaining chronicle of a creative life well lived.
Saltwater Chronicles Notes on Everything Under the Nova Scotia Sun
Publisher: Nimbus Publishing$18.95This book celebrates the ordinary: the everyday disasters and discoveries that shape a life. In this, his one hundredth book, Lesley Choyce takes readers along as he writes about nearly everything under the sun from his home by the sea on the North Atlantic coast of Canada—all of it most ordinary and extraordinary at the same time.
Grandfather’s House Returning to Cape Breton
Publisher: Nimbus Publishing$21.95Grandfather’s House is Clive Doucet’s follow-up to My Grandfather’s Cape Breton, published in 1980 and continuously in print. Now a grandfather himself, Doucet muses about this role. While he believed as a child that to be a grandfather was to own a farm by the sea, he now realizes that his job as a grandfather is to tell stories. In doing so, he traces the history of the Doucets back to Acadie, then to the early years of the Cape Breton village of Grand Étang and to modern-day Ottawa.
Doucet’s musings are interspersed with poetry, short stories, and with summer adventures with his grandchildren in Grand Étang. He paints a loving portrait of his grandfather’s village and the people, past and present, who make it a vibrant community. The themes of resilience and rejuvenation permeate the memoir, which is both rooted in nostalgia and filled with hope for a more sustainable future.
Mayann Francis An Honourable Life
Publisher: Nimbus Publishing$29.95When Mayann Francis was named Nova Scotia’s first Black lieutenant-governor, she wondered if the community would accept her. Francis was born just three months after businesswoman Viola Desmond was arrested for sitting in a whites-only section of a movie theatre in New Glasgow. Had enough changed? In this candid memoir, Francis describes her journey from humble beginnings in Whitney Pier, the daughter of immigrants, to the vice-regal office. She explains how her religious faith and her family’s belief in education equipped her for life’s challenges, including the loss of much of her vision.
Before Francis was named lieutenant-governor, she had earned a masters degree in New York City and worked in a series of senior positions. But her time in the vice-regal office was not without challenges. Francis was unable to live in Government House for much of her term because the official residence was being renovated. As the renovations dragged on, there were rumours, she writes, that some politicians and bureaucrats did not want her to ever move in. Was it, she asks, because she was Black? Francis poses tough questions in this book, but also offers advice and encouragement to anyone faced with challenges.
Escape to Reality How the World is Changing Gardening, and Gardening is Changing the World
Publisher: Nimbus Publishing$25.95Why do we garden? Why should we? How is gardening changing the world?
These are just some of the philosophical gardening questions pondered in this heartfelt and gorgeously designed book. An informed and personal reflection on gardening in Canada from the country’s preeminent horticultural expert, Escape to Reality goes beyond the hows that are the focus of most gardening books and explores the whys. In short, narrative essays, topics range from garden and nature as therapy to who we are as gardeners and what life values we gain through the experience of gardening. It also includes some practical tips for cultivating and coexisting with your garden. Co-written with son, Ben Cullen, bestselling author and horticultural consultant Mark Cullen’s newest book is sure to find a home on the shelves of mindful gardeners across the country, and beyond. Proceeds benefit the Highway of Heroes. Includes original illustrations.
Transplanted My Cystic Fibrosis Double-Lung Transplant Story
Publisher: Nimbus Publishing$17.95When Allison Watson awoke that day, she knew she was in a hospital bed. That’s all. She had no idea how much time had passed since she had seen her family. When she tried to focus, her vision was blurry, and when she tried to wave someone down, she became so exhausted she thought she was dying. Hours later, when Watson was able to communicate, she asked a nurse if the news was good or bad. “It’s good news,” the nurse replied. “You had your lung transplant four days ago.”
About 4,100 people in Canada have cystic fibrosis, and many are living longer today, thanks, in part, to transplants. CF mainly affects the digestive system and lungs, and there is no cure. In this candid memoir, Watson describes living with the disease and her life-altering surgery in 2014. Watson and her sister, Amy, both grew up with CF, and Allison had always believed that Amy would be the one to get a transplant first. The decision to undergo surgery was not easy. Nor was the road to full recovery. In this book, Watson, who cycled across Canada with her brother in 2008 to raise awareness of CF, describes her journey.
The Only Film in Town How a Little Film With a Big Heart was Made in Rural Nova Scotia
Publisher: Nimbus Publishing$19.95The Only Film in Town is a memoir about the making of a small-town feature film with heart. When Stuart Cresswell of Simple Films Ltd. decided to make The Only Game in Town in and around Tatamagouche, Nova Scotia, he did not anticipate the ups and the downs he would encounter, including the scrapping of the province’s film tax credit. Inspired by his own family, Cresswell recruited young and sometimes inexperienced talent, and he forged ahead.
His film is the story of Cormack Vertue, an autistic teenager with a unique ability: his super skill at solitaire. This skill lands him on his school’s solitaire team, complicates his social life, and sends him on a quest to establish who he really is and what he stands for. In The Only Film in Town, Cresswell explains how he made, against the odds, a gentle and humorous coming-of-age story for the big screen, creating art and opportunity in rural Nova Scotia. The Only Film in Town includes behind-the-scenes photos and stills from the film.
Field Notes A City Girl’s Search for Heart and Home in Rural Nova Scotia
Publisher: Nimbus Publishing$17.95Sara Jewell has collected lots of addresses—eighteen in total—including four in Vancouver, British Columbia, and three in her hometown of Cobourg, Ontario. But there was one address that always remained constant: Pugwash Point Road in rural Nova Scotia. She was nine years old the first time her family vacationed in the small fishing village about an hour from the New Brunswick border, and the red soil stained her heart. Life, as it’s wont to do, eventually took Jewell away from the east coast. But when her marriage and big-city life started to crumble, she only wanted one thing: a fresh start in Pugwash.
Accented with five original drawings from Joanna Close.
My Grandfather’s Cape Breton (new edition)
Publisher: Nimbus Publishing$20.95This is the timeless story of a young boy and his grandfather. It is a voyage of discovery that starts for both of them when young Clive arrives one summer at his grandfather’s farm in Cape Breton. Clive, with all the uncertainty of approaching adolescence, has only the vaguest impression of what a cow looks like and what is expected of him. Under the gentle guidance and wry wit of his Acadian grandfather he learns how to gallop a horse without falling off, how to save the hay crop from from an approaching storm, and how to assist with the birth of a calf. This is a story of Grand Étang, a humorous, sensuous vibrant place, and of a boy growing up wise one summer in Cape Breton.
Dramatic Life of a Country Doctor Fifty Years of Disasters and Diagnoses
Publisher: Nimbus Publishing$16.95Dr. Arnold Burden’s career began unintentionally when he performed his first surgery in the woods following a hunting accident at age 14. As a 20-year-old hospital clerk, he handed battle casualties after D-Day in France and Germany. His early years as a doctor began in rural Prince Edward Island, where he served in the combined role of doctor and coroner. Back home in Springhill, Nova Scotia, Dr. Burden was the first medic to enter the mines after the deadly No. 4 mine explosion in 1956 and the No. 2 mine bump, the most severe bump ever recorded in North America, in 1958. In both cases he risked his life alongside the underground rescue teams to bring the gassed and trapped miners to the surface.
In this new edition Dr. Burden gives his account of an active life and of a man dedicated to his patients; a man full of common-sense and interesting stories, who writes candidly of his dealing with patients, unusual cases, and brave efforts made under difficult conditions. As the author states: “The real satisfaction in life has come from helping people.”
The Gift
Publisher: Nimbus Publishing$19.95When Margaret Miller’s son, Bruce, was killed at age twenty-six by a drunk driver, her grief threatened to consume her. Mother’s Against Drunk Driving became her lifeline, and as she slowly became involved with the organization, she found a way to use her grief and anger to start helping other families and to fight impaired driving across the country.In this moving memoir, Margaret details her journey through grief and describes how she turned her sadness into action, first volunteering with and then becoming national president of MADD Canada. She also introduces us to other victims and bereaved families she has met through her work with MADD Canada. Poignant and inspiring, The Gift tells not just heartbreaking stories but also uplifting and hopeful stories of life after injury and loss.Believing firmly that the hope MADD Canada has brought to her life is a gift from her son, Margaret has dedicated her life to bringing that hope to other victims. This book honours the victims of impaired driving, provides hope for the bereaved, and gives every reader a strong reminder that with the help of ordinary Canadians, MADD Canada is saving lives.
Country Roads Memoirs from Rural Canada
Editor: Pam ChamberlainPublisher: Nimbus Publishing$19.95Rural people, places, and communities vary greatly in a country as geographically vast and culturally diverse as Canada. For some, the country was a place of happiness and belonging; for others, it was a source of hardship and sorrow. For many, it was both. Some writers grew up loving their rural homes, never wanting to leave. Others couldn’t wait to escape to the city.
From Victoria, British Columbia, to St. John’s, Newfoundland, three generations of Canadians tell their stories of growing up in rural communities in Country Roads. The writers–including journalist Pamela Wallin, NHL coach Brent Sutter, and award-winning authors Sharon Butala and Rudy Wiebe–share one thing in common: they were all country kids whose upbringing profoundly impacted their identities. The thirty-two memoirs in Country Roads are sometimes humorous, sometimes heartbreaking, but always engaging.
Lighthouse Legacies
Publisher: Nimbus Publishing$24.95Imagine living your life perched on a tiny island, without electricity, exposed to the fury of the sea, and always at the service of the mariner. This is how lightkeepers and their families spent their lives, even up until the 1960s. We are very close to losing the last of the people who lived this isolated life and experienced the heyday of lightkeeping in Canada. Lighthouse Legacies lets us share in the memories of those who kept the lights.
These stories are presented largely in the words of the people, with context and history by author Chris Mills. Each chapter deals with an element of lighthouse life and is complemented by photos from lighthouse family collections, the Coast Guard and Mills’ own collection.
Home Is Where the Water Is
Publisher: Island Studies Press$27.95Born and raised in tumultuous times in East Asia, Hung-Min Chiang survived earthquakes, wars, foreign occupation, dictatorship, and illness before making his way to Prince Edward Island. While navigating his perilous journey, Chiang practiced the “The Way of Water,” Daoist lessons for living drawn from Nature. Home Is Where the Water Is examines the many critical turning points in a life and how these shaped the person he became.
In the Pit A Cape Breton Coal Miner
Publisher: Breton Books$17.95A RARE, EXCITING INSIDER STORY of coal mine life in Cape Breton, filled with humour, pride, terror, and humanity.
From shoveling at the coal face and hand-lifting tons of shaker pans, to hurtling through low narrow tunnels testing a diesel during early mechanization—you are not spared the details—or the laughs!
Here are the gripping drama and rich good humour of one man’s daily work underground—a rare, personal account that opens up the culture of coal, from a man who worked 15 years in Number 12 and 18 Collieries, New Waterford.
A Tale of Two Fiddlers The Early Days of Sports and Life in Charlottetown
Publisher: Acorn Press$22.95This is the story of the Charlottetown family as seen through the eyes of the oldest boy, Fred “Fiddler” MacDonald. This memoir tells of Frederick James’ journeys in the City, starting with his days as a newspaper and a shoe-shine boy while attending Queen Square School, an all-boys Catholic school in the centre of the City. The story retraces his paper route in the mid-1950’s and the people that he encountered in his travels.
The Bygone Days Folklore, Traditions & Toenails
Publisher: Acorn Press$22.95Reginald—better known as “Dutch”—Thompson is a multi-faceted storyteller with unforgettable voices—those of Roy from Murray Harbour North, Adelaide from Bunbury, Gus from Chepstow, and countless others—to tell the stories of the Bygone days in Prince Edward Island [sometimes NS, too]. Stories that, without Dutch’s talent and care, might be remembered only by family and close friends or lost altogether.
Remember when the train ran from tip to tip and along all the small branches, taking goods, people, and baseball teams to other parts of the Island? How about when ice cream and two pieces of cakes cost 10 cents at White’s Ice Cream Parlour on Kent Street? When lobster was not the gourmet’s delight it is now and the backs were used to fertilize the crops? That butchering the pig before a full moon will mean less fat on the meat? Or that it was bad luck to cut your nails on Sundays.
From CBC Radio to the pages of this book, you’ll hear Dutch’s voice encouraging these informative, illuminating, poignant, and hilarious stories from the minds and hearts of Maritimers born between 1895 and 1925, almost as if they were all still here and telling them to you.
Somewhere North of Where I Was
Publisher: Acorn Press$22.95Somewhere North of Where I Was is the heartrending story of a young girl whose childhood innocence was stolen. Retold with the reflective voice of a woman who has survived and transcended the trauma of childhood poverty, neglect, and abuse, Spence’s wisdom and poignant storytelling abilities suck you into the world of a little girl whose tragic circumstances are tempered with fond family memories. One may be left to wonder how it is a child can survive and move beyond such experiences.
With brazen honesty and a driving spirit of hope, perseverance and sometimes sheer stubborn will, Spence brings the reader into her world as she lived it, moving us along, pulling us apart, compelling us to continue reading. In the years of being shuffled from one alcoholic parent to another and finally into foster care, Spence becomes a little girl we cry for, love and and cheer for. Spence is everybody’s child.
Our Sable Island Home
Publisher: Pottersfield Press$19.95Our Sable Island Home is a personal story that does not shy away from the perils of life in an isolated locale, interwoven with maritime history that centres around the iconic island. The story will take you on a journey more than sixty years back into the past, to a time when Sable Island was referred to as “the Graveyard of the Atlantic.”
Making a Life Twenty-five Years of Hooking Rugs
Publisher: Nimbus Publishing$34.95Celebrated textile artist Deanne Fitzpatrick learned early that traditional rug-hooking is so much more than just making mats for old houses. This intricate art form has given her the chance to speak without words. It has built her a supportive community, a successful business, and an international reputation. But most of all, hooking rugs has allowed Deanne to live a life she loves.
Reflecting on her twenty-five-year career, Deanne shares lessons gleaned both at the frame and away from her studio. Whether it’s dealing with an artistic block, or balancing running a business and raising a family, Deanne has navigated it all with frank humour and grace. Containing over 75 full-colour photos of projects past and present, Making a Life is an ode to the joys of leading a creative life.
