Atlantic Canadian must-reads

AFTERWORD Atlantic Books Today 6ATLANTIC CANADIAN MUST-READS Six local book experts select a personal favourite

SONG OF RITA JOE: AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF A MI’KMAQ POET

Rita Joe Breton Books

Often called the poet laureate of the Mi’kmaq people, Rita Joe writes with such simplicity, honesty, and kindness, that she has made me cry. A residential school survivor who lost her mother as a child, she tells her life story with a directness that can’t help but teach you something. She wrote poetry, she said, hoping she would inspire others to write. “My greatest wish is that there will be more writing from my people, and that our children will read it. I have said again and again that our history would be different if it had been expressed by us.” —Allison Lawlor is the author of six books of nonfiction including Broken Pieces, which was nominated for a 2019 Silver Birch Award by the Ontario Library Association and a 2019-2020 Hackmatack Children’s Choice Book Award.

THE COLONY OF UNREQUITED DREAMS

Wayne Johnston Penguin Random House

After much deliberation and being forced to pick only one, I have to say Wayne Johnston’s The Colony of Unrequited Dreams is my favourite Atlantic book. As a fictional account of an infamous nonfiction character (NL Premier and “Father of Confederation” Joey Smallwood), this book is an epic that canvasses a lifetime of hopes, ambitions and grievous mistakes. The manner in which it combines beauty, darkness and wickedly sharp humour has stuck with me for years. —Bridget Canning is the award-winning author of The Greatest Hits of Wanda Jaynes and Some People’s Children. Her first novel was a finalist for the BMO Winterset Award and was nominated for the 2019 International DUBLIN Literary Award.

GENERATIONS RE-MERGING

Shalan Joudry Gaspereau Press

Shalan Joudry artfully explores the poetic relationships between generations—Mi’kmaw ancestry, identity, parenthood and traditional teachings. In Generations Re-merging, she draws as much from the landscape as her Elders, as her poems carry a specific vernacular that embraces life, loss and love, endurance and beauty, social and ecological shifts. —Shannon Webb-Campbell is a mixed-Indigenous (Mi’kmaq) settler poet, writer and critic. She is the author of three books, including Still No Word (Breakwater Books).

THE INNOCENTS

Michael Crummey Penguin Random House

This is such a painfully tough question, to choose my favourite Atlantic Canadian book. My choice … it is a toss-up, between Lisa Moore’s Something for Everyone, Joan Clark’s An Audience of Chairs and Michael Crummey’s The Innocents. But I have to say … Crummey’s book is my most favourite. The Innocents is a masterpiece that marries language and content in an epic tale that

elevates historical fiction to a wild new level. A story that continues to haunt me, it distills Newfoundland’s early colonization into a dark creation myth. A brilliant mix of darkness and light, violence and love. —Based in Halifax, Carol Bruneau is the author of ten books, including Glass Voices and the just-released novel, Brighten the Corner Where You Are, a fictionalized account of the life of Maud Lewis.

TAAPOATEGL & PALLET

Peter J Clair Chapel Street Editions

My favourite book from this region is Peter J Clair’s Taapoategl & Pallet, which is set in a world that Settlers like me actually live inside but can’t see and don’t recognize. The novel explores how the Mi’kmaq have survived my culture’s brutal efforts to forget them and to make them forget themselves. The novel is empowering for Wabanaki peoples, but Settlers in Atlantic Canada need these kinds of stories too as we learn to look at this place through the eyes of the people who were made here. —Rachel Bryant is the author of The Homing Place: Indigenous and Settler Literary Legacies of the Atlantic. She is a Settler Canadian researcher who divides her time between the traditional and unceded territories of the Mi’kmaq and Wolastoqiyik.

ISLAND

Alistair MacLeod Penguin Random House

When I was in my early 20s, I worked at A Pair of Trindles, a Canadian-only bookstore in Halifax’s Historic Properties. Every summer we would sell hundreds of copies of Alistair MacLeod’s short-story collection The Lost Salt Gift of Blood. It was my favourite book in the store—just about the closest I’ve ever read to perfection, every word necessary, every image clear and sharp as crystal, and the narrative tone like something out of the mists of time. That book is out of print, but every story from it and MacLeod’s second story collection are included in Island, which has become my favourite all-time Atlantic Canadian book. —Ray Cronin is a senior arts professional with more than 25 years’ experience in multiple aspects of museums and creative industries. Most recently the CEO of the Art Gallery of Nova Scotia, Cronin led that institution for seven years. ■

Give a local story this Christmas

KIRA’S CROSSING Orysia Dawydiak $13.95 | 9781773660585

WHEN THE HILL CAME DOWN Susan White $22.95 | 9781773660516 A RELUCTANT SEARCH FOR SPIRITUAL TRUTHS Adrian McNally Smith $22.95 | 9781773660493

HERE AND THERE Roderick MacDonald $17.95 | 9781773660653 THE KETO SOLUTION By Angela Doucette $19.95 | 9781773660462

Available through local booksellers

WHAT IF? FROM WORRIES TO WONDER Words & Art by Doretta Groenendyk $22.95 | 9781773660615

BROKEN CRAYONS Words by Patsy Dingwell Art by Marla Lesage $14.95 | 9781773660639 MI’KMAQ CAMPFIRE STORIES OF PRINCE EDWARD ISLAND Words by Julie Pellissier-Lush Art by Laurie Ann Marie Martin $14.95 | 9781773660547 acornpresscanada.com