BUFFALO JUMP: A WOMAN'S TRAVELS

Rita Moir. BUFFALO JUMP: A Woman's Travels. Coteau 1999. 

Love this Canadian non-fiction about writing, women's stories, and travelling territory so familiar to me--#3 highway past Head-Smashed-In Buffalo Jump to Medicine Hat, driving side roads to Winnipeg and beyond. Love the image of her writing meandering like the old Assiniboine River with its braids, oxbows, and wide deep valleys. Love the motif of the buffalo and putting on the skin, the robes, the clothes of the past. Love the truth that "the voices won't come to you unless you sleep alone." Sigh. 

CONVICTIONS

Donna Gannon. CONVICTIONS: Journey Beyond Innocence. 

Hearing the writer read from her novel CONVICTION at the Chilliwack Book Man Local Writers Festival inspired me to order the book and read it on Kindle. So convenient, and fast. The story follows Shelley as her common-law husband is investigated, tried, convicted of fraud and sentenced to prison. Shelley's job as a social worker / counsellor, along with the tribulations of the step-children, and the traumas of her own family including her younger brother, occupy her emotional energy. It does seem to me that professionals with this type of training must struggle to separate private and professional boundaries, always shouldering the burden of being the one with the answers who is expected to "fix" things for everyone else. Or, at least, to help them fix things for themselves. 

THE SONG OF LEONARD COHEN

Harry Rasky. The Song of Leonard Cohen. Mosaic, 2001.

An account of interactions between filmmaker Rasky and singer songwriter Cohen while making a film of a concert tour. Some insights in the poet's answers to probing questions. Additional information about an aborted film of Dylan in the early '70s. This slim volume will take its place along my 'sacred texts' shelf. 

FORGIVENESS

Mark Sakamoto. Forgiveness: A Gift from My Grandparents. HarperCollins, 2014.

A memoir of growing up in Medicine Hat, Alberta, in a dysfunctional family, bookended by Canadian grandparents with similar but different experiences during World War II. Grandpa Ralph MacLean was a POW in Japan. Grandma Mitsue Sakamoto and family were removed from Vancouver and resettled in Alberta. 

The sixth selection for the Hawthorne Book Club.