Launched! New Titles from FBCW Members Soul of a Nomad Kim Letson / West Moon Publishing, 2020 / 9781777271107 / $26.99 Transversing Canada, rounding Cape Horn, riding the Patagonian Pampas and Mongolian wilds. From Greek Islands to North Cape. Through Thailand or along the Silk Road, Letson’s journeys reflect her curiosity and adventurous spirit. Readers meet characters imagined and real: ancestral ghosts, the author’s intrepid parents, lighthouse keepers, an Auschwitz survivor, gauchos, Roma and nomads. Set within historic and literary contexts, Soul of a Nomad shares sixty-five years of journeys and revelations. Evocative descriptions nestle amongst hair-raising anecdotes, every page encouraging the reader to explore further. Arc of Light Lorraine Gane / Raven Chapbooks, 2020 / 9780973440843 In this loving and light-filled elegy to her mother, Salt Spring Island poet Lorraine Gane evokes a painful stage that mid-life children of ailing parents will recognize. It is a complex grief, letting go of parents as protectors, moving into acceptance of inevitable loss, and of their own place, parentless, now on the front lines of mortality. The beauty of the natural world is ever present in these poems; doubtless Salt Spring’s stunning landscapes assist Gane’s braiding of light and dark, life and death. The final poem finds her tranquil and accepting, comforted by the image of a luminous white arc floating over her mother’s body. (Wendy Donawa.) ARGENTINA poesia Franci Louann / Ekstasis Editions, 2020 / 9781771714068 / $24.95 Franci Louann’s book captures the unique and sensuous qualities of Argentina and its cities. It gives the reader the view of an outsider looking through eyes of love—personal and cultural—but clear-sighted about dark political histories and present complexities, and the difficulties gaining knowledge of how to live in a new land. In Louann’s poetry, we hear the music, taste the wine, read the authors, and enjoy the artists and architects of this place, while we take up residence and wander its streets, grand and humble.~ Adrienne Drobnies, author of Salt and Ashes.
Lou and the Whale of a Crime Inga Kruse / November, 2020 / Paperback ISBN: 9781777300104 E-book ISBN: 9781777300111 Lou can’t seem to help herself—when she sees something suspicious, she has to investigate. Her Great Dane Rocky is always by her side trying to help, but mostly getting himself into hilarious tangles. Using her homemade spy gear, she stumbles on nefarious criminals operating nearby. Along with Lou’s best friend Oliver, it takes all of her bravery and smarts to figure out what’s happening. Little does she know there is something else more serious brewing in the town of Squamish. The crime turns out to be bigger than anybody could imagine. Lou pulls together her friends to figure out what is happening Now they have to figure out how to stop it. Unamakik, Land of Fog Afiena Kamminga / FriesenPress, 2020 / 9781525577093 / $22.49 In this sequel to The Sun Road, 2014, we follow a tenth-century Norse woman from Greenland, Thora Thorvinnsdottir, on her travels in newly discovered “Westland” across the Western Sea, with her lover, Elkimu, and indigenous “Westlander.” The story features harmony and conflict in the meeting of two people, one from Viking Age Scandinavia, the other from the indigenous world of that time in what is today known as Atlantic Canada. Will Thora succeed in creating a new life for herself in an alien place among an alien people?
28 WORDWORKS ︱ 2021 Volume II
