Bøger udgivet af Goose Lane Editions

Is it possible to reconcile the mind of a youth with the actions of a monster? In this set of dazzling stories, Dora Award-winning playwright Anton Piatigorsky casts his imaginative gaze across the formative years of the world's most infamous dictators.

Les collections d'œuvres d'art racontent des histoires qui reflètent les intérêts du collectionneur et de son époque. Chefs-d'œuvre de la Galerie d'art Beaverbrook relate la vie rocambolesque de sir William Maxwell (Max) Aitken, aussi connu sous le nom de lord Beaverbrook, magnat de la presse multimillionnaire, éditeur de journaux arrogant, habile politicien, maître de la propagande, auteur et grand philanthrope.En 1959, sir Max Aitken inaugure à Fredericton, au Nouveau-Brunswick, la Galerie d'art Beaverbrook pour abriter une collection exemplaire de tableaux. Constitué par lord Beaverbrook lui-même et son entourage de conservateurs et de collègues, ce noyau initial d'œuvres deviendra l'une des plus belles et des plus importantes collections d'art britannique en Amérique de Nord. Il comprend notamment des œuvres de J.M.W. Turner, Lucian Freud, Graham Sutherland et Walter Sickert, ainsi que des tableaux représentatifs de Thomas Gainsborough, John Constable, John Singleton Copley, Eugène Delacroix, Joshua Reynolds et Salvador Dalí, qui témoignent du caractère distinctif et de la qualité de la remarquable collection de la Galerie.Ces œuvres importantes sont réunies pour la première fois dans cette publication luxueuse comprenant plus de 75 reproductions en couleur, ainsi que des essais sure l'histoire de la collection et les chefs-d'œuvre, signés par six critiques renommés: Elliott H. King, historien de l'art et spécialiste de Dalí James Hamilton, auteur de Turner: A Life; Richard Calvocoressi, directeur de la fondation Henry Moore; l'auteur et conservateur Angus Stewart; l'historienne de l'art Katharine Eustace; ainsi que Terry Graff, conservateur de la Galerie d'art Beaverbrook et principal auteur de cet ouvrage.Pour clore l'ouvrage, le journaliste Marty Klinkenberg et le directeur général de la Galerie d'art Beaverbrook, Bernard Riordon, retracent les péripéties du différend opposant le musée et les deux fondations Beaverbrook.

Showcasing the major career highlights and some of the most recent work of abstract painter Jacques Hurtubise, this lavishly illustrated volume captures the key works of Hurtubise's formidable fifty-plus year career, many of which have never been brought together in a major exhibition or publication. This exceptional collection offers new insight into the development of Hurtubise's work -- from his early graphic abstract paintings of the 1960s and 1970s to his mask paintings and the brushy paintings and stencil work of his Blackout series. His latest map-based work, which brings together the passion of his "sun" series and the exotic and hypnotic lines of his "masks" and "splash" paintings, brings his mastery of the medium to the fore. Hurtubise's bright, geometric patterning has often prompted comparisons to Claude Tousignant, Guido Molinari, and Yves Gaucher. His unique sensitivity as a printmaker, his masterful brushwork and repeated imagery sets his work apart as uniquely his own. Designed to accompany a major national touring exhibition organized by the Art Gallery of Nova Scotia, Jacques Hurtubise features essays by curators Sarah Fillmore and Bernard Lamarche, writers and critics Jeffrey Spalding and Renß Viau, and art historian Nathalie Miglioli. Cette monographie abondamment illustrée présente les principaux jalons de plus de conquante ans de carrière de l'artiste Jacques Hurtubise. On y recense sa production actuelle ainsi que ses oeuvres phares, dont un grand nombre n'avaient jamais été réunies auparavant. La compilation exceptionnelle permet de mieux comprendre l'évolution d'Hurtubise, depuis ses premiers travaux graphiques des années 1960 et 1970 jusqu'à ses masques, ses tableaux aux traits ardents et le recours au stencil dans sa série Blackout. Ses oeuvres plus récentes réalisées à partir de cartes routières -- qui allient la passion qui habite ses « soleils » et les lignes exotiques et hypnotiques de ses « masques » et de ses « éclaboussures » -- témoignent de sa pleine maîtrise des techniques les plus variées. Les formes géométriques abstraites aux couleurs vives de cet artiste ont souvent suscité des comparaisons avec Claude Tousignant, Guido Molinari et Yves Gaucher. Toutefois, la sensibilité particulièrement manifeste d'Hurtubise dans ses gravures, sa technique maîtrisée de la peinture et la répétition des motifs le distinguent de ses contemporains.

For Lily Piper, life on the prairie is spare and austere. Nothing in her world responds to her hunger for life. When puberty hits, an abrupt shift in fate sends Lily to England, a place she thinks she may have invented. There at last, she experiences life in all its ambiguity, until she is called home to face a future she thought she had escaped. Reading by Lightning, Joan Thomas's long-awaited first novel, took readers by storm. A year after its publication, it had won numerous awards, found a large readership, and been selected by popular vote for On the Same Page, Manitoba's one book reading experience.

"One could do worse than to grow up on a river." In this bountiful book of essays, Wayne Curtis voyages down the tributaries of his past, casting a net to ensnare moments of love, loss, and life on the waterways of New Brunswick. Curtis writes of the simple pleasure of fishing with friends, of his first unforgettable kiss, and of a grandfather who teased that "all dreams that were told before breakfast had a better chance of becoming real." A wistful trek through personal history, Of Earthly and River Things is an elegant requiem for a vanishing culture, a world where people were grateful to the river for its bounty.

A National Bestseller. Now available in paperback. “On a Rrrroll! You may not be familiar with Ron Buist, but you know his handiwork.” — The Ottawa Citizen. A behind-the-scenes look at a simple business that became a Canadian icon. Tales from Under the Rim chronicles the rise of Tim Hortons, from its humble beginnings to a national institution. The recipe was simple: it took “one hockey player, one favourite barber shop, one former drummer, and one police officer” plus “the luck hard work brings” to transform a once unknown donut shop into one of Canada’s leading franchise operations. In this bestselling business memoir, Ron Buist shows how Tim Hortons became a second home to millions of Canadians. It includes the grass-roots marketing strategy that defined the early years, the Tim Hortons habit of listening to customers, and the whole story of Roll Up the Rim to Win, the no-frills contest that has become a defining feature of Canadian life.

Nova Scotia artist David Askevold (1940-2008) is recognized as a key contributor to the development and pedagogy of conceptual art. His work was included in the seminal exhibition Information at New York's Museum of Modern Art in 1970 that cemented conceptualism as a movement. He quickly gained a reputation as one of the most influential conceptual artists in Canada, with his work apearing in many of the genre's formative texts and exhibitions. During his forty-year career, Askevold remained at the vanguard of contemporary practice. Askevold was born in Conrad, Montana. After studying at the University of Montana, Brooklyn Museum Art School, and Kansas City Art Institute, he moved to Halifax in 1968 to lecture at the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design. During the early 1970s, his famous Projects Class brought such artists as Sol LeWitt, Vito Acconci, John Baldessari, and Lawrence Weiner to work with his students, focusing critical attention on his adopted city and on his own unorthodox approach to making art. This illustrated volume examines the various strains of Askevold's pioneering practice -- sculpture and installation, film and video, photo-text works and photography, and computer-generated imagery. David Askevold: Once Upon a Time in the East features essays by celebrated writer-curators Ray Cronin, Peggy Gale, Richard Hertz, and Irene Tsatsos as well as contributions from several of Askevold's contemporaries, including Aaron Brewer, Tony Oursler, and Mario Garcia Torres. The book accompanies an exhibition that opens at the National Gallery of Canada in Ottawa and travels to the Confederation Centre Art Gallery in Charlottetown and the Art Gallery of Nova Scotia in Halifax.

Seduced by stories of Depression-era work camps and a cross-country march that ended in an historic riot, Edie follows her wandering husband Slim from mine to mine, caring for their son, Belly, beneath the makeshift shelter of canvas tents. But a decade of hardship takes its toll, and after leaving Slim passed out in an unheated apartment, Edie and Belly find themselves trapped on a snowbound train. Edie slips in and out of memory, retelling Slim's tales both to comfort her son and reinvent herself anew. Together, mother and son ponder their past and possible futures, trying to predict what will happen when they reach their destination. Vividly inventive, The Time We All Went Marching is an episodic novel of storytelling, memory, and imagination. In this spectacular work of fiction, Arley McNeney reaches deep into the vulnerability of individual perception, holding her readers breathless.

The Second World War is epitomized by the image of fast-moving tank battles between German and Allied armoured forces blazing back and forth across Europe. Modern duels between rival tanks have long fascinated historians.The 8th Princess Louise's (New Brunswick) Hussars was one of the most battle-proven armoured regiments of the Second World War. Founded in 1848 as a volunteer cavalry regiment, the Hussars traded their beloved horses for cars on the eve of war. When war broke out, they mobilized as a motorcycle regiment before finally converting to tanks in 1941. The story of the Hussars' Italian campaign began in late 1943 with their arrival in Naples and their first action near Ortona. This volume tells the story of their participation in the great drive beyond Monte Cassino to Rome and in the fierce and bloody battles at the Gothic Line and Coriano Ridge, which cemented their reputation in Canada's military history.

Glass has existed for more than 4,000 years, although it was not mass produced until the 1830s, when pressing machines that produced glass shapes were introduced. As mechanization improved, decorated glassware began to be produced relatively quickly and affordably. By the 1889s, glass was most commonly used for bottles, lamp chimneys, and lantern globes. At the same time, moulded and pressed glass was being manufactured in Pennsylvania, Ohio, and New England, and, surprisingly, in Nova Scotia. In this beautifully illustrated book, featuring photographs of the highly collectable patterned tableware produced between 1881 and 1892, Deborah Trask examines the history of the glass industry in Nova Scotia during the golden age of pressed-glass production. Employing her skills as an historian and detective of sorts, she tells the story of the glass factories -- the Nova Scotia Glass Company, the Humphrey Glass Company, and the Lamont Glass Company, as well as the modern NovaScotian Crystal -- offering a bevy of information on their distinctive glass patterns and products.

On June 18, 1812, US President James Madison signed a declaration of war against Britain and launched an attack against the British colonies in North America in what he thought would be a quick and decisive land grab. Fearing invasion, the New Brunswick Legislative Assembly, along with the citizenry, prepared for war. When the invasion failed to materialize, neutrality ruled along the New Brunswick-Maine border and New Brunswick turned its attention elsewhere. It supported the naval battles along the coast between the Royal Navy and American privateers and the British campaigns in Upper and Lower Canada by sending reinforcements and supplies along the grand communications route. With Napoleon's defeat in Europe, Britain refocused its military on North America. In addition to sending reinforcements to the campaigns in Upper and Lower Canada, the British Army invaded Maine, seized disputed lands along the Penobscot River Valley, and redrew the map so that, for a time, much of northern Maine would become part of New Brunswick. In this revealing account, Robert Dallison examines the repercussions of the War of 1812 in New Brunswick and Maine, how a once-friendly border turned hostile, how wartime growth turned villages into towns, and how the post-war settlement of British soldiers and Black Refugees changed the composition of the province's population.

Shortlisted, George Bugnet Award for FictionKalila chronicles the lives of Maggie and Brodie, whose joy collides with devastation when their daughter's birth also heralds the news of her congenital heart condition. In this startlingly inventive novel, Rosemary Nixon braids light and darkness into a narrative chain pulled exquisitely taut. Through Maggie and Brodie's shifting viewpoints, the isolating impenetrability of hospital life, the mediation of physics, music, and family, Nixon propels the reader into unmapped emotional terrain where a shell-shocked family grapples with the horror, joy, and mystery of impermanence. The result is a spellbinding tale, provocative for the emotions and the intellect.

There's something fresh and fantastic in Aurian Haller's view of the world. In Song of the Taxidermist, he demonstrates both a fascination and unease with the independence of the body -- its resistance to the self's colonizing imperative. Employing a powerful visual and intellectual imagination, a camera and a roving curiosity, he investigates the ways that flesh inhabits the spaces around us. Building upon the stories of famous taxidermied specimens -- the celebrated French giraffe, Zarafe, and the Alaskan sled dog, Togo -- he explores what it means when the shell of a being becomes iconic in a culture: how place, an idea, or a quality might fill a standing skin. Like his compatriots Erin Mouré, Roo Borson, and Michael Ondaatje, Aurian Haller pushes beyond the constraints of the short lyric or narrative moment to experiment with larger thematic forms. This stunning new collection, so carefully executed in image and phrasing, so agile in its metaphors, is both astonishing in scope and lush in its imaginative landscape.

SUMMER, 1974 -- Six teenaged boys died and fifty-four were injured in an explosion on the Canadian Forces Base in Valcartier, Quebec. A live grenade inadvertently made its way into a box of dud ammunition, and its pin was pulled during a lecture on explosives safety. One hundred and forty boys survived, each isolated in their trauma, yet expected to carry on with their lives. Thirty-four years later, Gerry Fostaty, an 18-year-old sergeant that summer and one of the first on the scene after the explosion, received an unexpected email from his former sergeant-major, triggering a journey into memory -- a quest for a true picture of what had happened on that day. In As You Were, Fostaty has pieced together the story of how a series of preventable mistakes led to tragedy. The only full account of an event that received minor attention at the time, As You Were is the story of a normal day turned horrific; how duty, responsibility, and honour make ordinary people take extraordinary measures; and how the military did their best to ignore this devastating incident. The M207 Grenade: The M207 grenade is a fragmentation hand grenade. It is lemon shaped and has a coil of notched steel covered with a smooth, thin, steel layer. Within the coil is an explosive centre. When detonated, the core shatters the coil and the steel casing, transforming the broken particles into high-velocity, irregularly shaped projectiles that can cause casualties up to fifteen metres away. It is a very effective anti-personnel device. That is, it was designed to kill and injure soldiers or anyone within its effective range. Because of its effectiveness, the design has been widely copied by many nations. On the morning of July 15th, 1974, a Warrant Officer organized and selected the display items and the dummy explosives that he would use in the explosives safety lecture. All of them were display models and the dummies. They were painted bright colours and marked to make them distinct from the live models and easily recognizable. One never has to guess with these. The gaudy colours and markings indicate at a glance that they were dummies. The live explosives were olive green. The Warrant Officer carefully chose the items to reflect a wide range of ordinance, including grenades, anti-personnel mines, and rockets.

Jack Chambers was an artist of deep feeling and conviction. A founder of Canadian Artists' Representation, a filmmaker who created dreamlike explorations of consciousness and a painter who believed in the sanctity of sight, he lived an intensely affirmative life. In Jack Chambers: Light, Spirit, Time, Place and Life, Dennis Reid and his team of curator-writers bring the artist's sensibility and his world view into focus, grouping works of all media into threads that highlight ways of seeing and of being present in the world. A brilliant draughtsman and remarkable painter, Jack Chambers spent his early adulthood travelling and studying in Europe. When he returned to his hometown of London, Ontario, in 1961, he found himself at the centre of a vibrant arts scene that would become the backdrop for his films and surrealist-influenced works based on dream-like evocations of memory. There was also, in Chambers, a little bit of the mystic who believed he could see beyond the surface of things. To enter into the world presented by this book is to enter a space of reflection, where seeing is heightened and the world around us, painting by dreamlike painting and drawing by radiant drawing, becomes truly luminous. In this unprecedented book, Dennis Reid has gathered together several writers to document various ideas in Chambers's work. Each essayist has looked at a sensation or connecting presence to explore an idea that sits as intertwining thread through the whole of Chambers's short career. Each have approached their subject with a combination of long-standing interest in the artist, acute fascination with a moment in Chambers's career and sensitivity to the particularities of his art. Together, they provide profound insight into the artist and his defining artistic processes. Essayists featured in Jack Chambers: Light, Spirit, Time, Place and Life include art critic Sarah Milroy, celebrated poet and art writer Christopher Dewdney, journalist Gillian MacKay, literary scholar Ross Woodman and art historian Mark Cheetham. Writers Michael Ondaatje and Susan Crean and painters John Scott and Eric Fischl have also contributed personal reflections in a variety of forms. Rounding out the book is an introductory essay on Jack Chambers -- the man, his life and his practice -- by editor-curator-writer Dennis Reid. Jack Chambers: Light, Spirit, Time, Place and Life is the first major publication on the work on one of Canada's most recognized and broadly influential artists. Drawing on the large collection of the artist's work held by the Art Gallery of Ontario, it features more than a hundred colour plates, an extensive chronology and a complete catalogue of the works held by the AGO.

Two hundred years ago, the winds of war swept the United States and British North America, fanning the conflict raging on land and at sea. Naval combat churned the waters of the Great Lakes while privateers and government vessels engaged in a guerre de course in the Bay of Fundy and the Gulf of Maine. In Battle for the Bay, Joshua M. Smith tells the complete story of the warships that defended the eastern waters of British North America. Fighting the Americans and the elements, and risking shipwreck, capture, and imprisonment, the crews of the Provincial sloop Brunswicker, His Majesty's schooner Bream, and His Majesty's brig of war Boxer fought for King and country -- and a little profit. Although seldom operating in squadrons, these naval vessels escorted British ships between ports, patrolled the Bay for hostile forces, and raided the enemy coast, playing a vital role in this crucial war. Battle for the Bay: The Naval War of 1812 is Volume 17 in the New Brunswick Military Heritage Series.

Art collections tell stories that reflect the interests of the collector and his or her times.Masterworks from the Beaverbrook Art Gallery advances a dramatic narrative in the epic tale of multi-millionaire business tycoon, pushy newspaper publisher, shrewd politician, master propagandist, published author, and great philanthropist Sir William Maxwell (Max) Aitken, also known as Lord Beaverbrook.In 1959, Sir Max Aitken opened the Beaverbrook Art Gallery in Fredericton, New Brunswick, which introduced an exemplary collection of paintings. Amassed by Lord Beaverbrook and his entourage of curators and colleagues, the Gallery's founding collection formed the core of what is now one of the finest and most significant collections of British art in North America. Featuring works by J.M.W. Turner and Lucian Freud, Graham Sutherland and Walter Sickert as well as signature pieces by Thomas Gainsborough, John Constable, John Singleton Copley, Eugène Delacroix, Joshua Reynolds, and Salvador Dalí, these masterworks represent the distinctive nature and quality of the Gallery's exquisite collection.For the first time, these major works have been brought together in this lavish publication. Featuring more than 75 colour reproductions, Masterworks from the Beaverbrook Art Gallery also includes essays on the history of the collection and individual masterpieces by six major writer-critics: art historian and Dalí scholar Elliott H. King; James Hamilton, author of Turner: A Life; Richard Calvocoressi, Director of the Henry Moore Foundation; writer-curator Angus Stewart; art historian Katharine Eustace; and curator and principal author of this publication, Terry Graff of the Beaverbrook Art Gallery. Rounding out the book is the story of the dispute between the Gallery and the two Beaverbrook foundations by journalist Marty Klinkenberg and Beaverbrook Art Gallery Director and CEO Bernard Riordon.

Remember these slogans? "Anything Goes." "They wear longer because they're made stronger." Remember pearl-snap Western shirts? Scrubbies? George W. Groovey? Cowboy Kings? Red Straps? If you do, chances are you've owned a few pairs of GWGs in your time. One of Canada's great cultural icons. GWG was an integral part of growing up in the 20th century. The products of the Great Western Garment Company were as Canadian as hockey, toques, and Tim Hortons, staples for some generations, defining cool for others. When Wayne Gretzky said, "I grew up in GWGs," he was speaking for millions of Canadians from coast to coast. Here, at long last, is the complete, lushly illustrated history of the Great Western Garment Company, including archival photographs, advertisements, product photos, and insights on the long history of this iconic Canadian company. From its humble roots in Edmonton in 1911 to its final factory closing in 2004, GWG remains firmly fixed in the Canadian psyche and still holds a place in Canadian hearts.

A stark, primitive bicycle, looking suspiciously like the one the city used to designate a bike path; a giant zipper, pulling asphalt open on a busy commuter route; a giant's footprint, left behind after stomping through the sleeping city. By 2004, Roadsworth had pulled off close to 300 pieces of urban art on the streets of Montreal. Where would the nocturnal street artist strike next? Nowhere -- or so it seemed. In the fall, he was charged with 51 counts of public mischief. Then the citizens of Montreal rallied their support. A year later he was let off with a slap on the wrist. Since then, Roadsworth has continued to intervene in public spaces. He now travels the world, executing commissioned work for Cirque du Soleil and The Last O (cycled over in the Tour de France), and for cities, galleries, public institutions and arts festivals. In his brilliantly inventive art, Roadsworth takes the urban landscape and turns its constituent elements on their heads, both indicting our culture's excesses and celebrating what makes us human (lest we forget).

From privateers to peacekeepers, from sailing ship battles to submarine espionage, New Brunswick's recorded naval history dates back to the first European incursions. Bounded on three sides by the ocean and with a network of navigable rivers, the sea has dominated the province's history. The battles between the English and the French led to seaborne invasion and the expulsion of the Acadians. When the Americans and British plundered each other for patriotism and profit in the War of 1812, New Brunswick built its own navy to protect its shipping. In 1881, the new Dominion of Canada chose New Brunswick as its first naval base, and three decades later, MP George Foster initiated the parliamentary debate that led to the founding of the modern Canadian Navy. This fact-filled volume tells the story of the province's unique contribution to Canada's storied naval history, culminating with a description of how, by the Naval Centennial year of 2010, the bulk of the modern Canadian fleet was designed and constructed in New Brunswick.

The Scare in the Crow races across the back roads like a muscle car making a beer run. Then it pauses, in haunting contemplation of a walk through the woods. Armstrong's poems inhabit the fantasia of this world -- in the peculiarities of taxidermy, crowds watching a house wash away in a spring flood, old tombstones cast over a riverbank, or rumours of a sighting of the extinct eastern panther. Gothic shadows of dead friends and strangers inhabit the lost cause of failing farms and industries, eroding communities, children dispersed, the names of distant cousins slipping through loose fingers. With blistering wit, Armstrong invites us to laugh at the zaniness of life. From moments of melancholy emerges an unflinching gaze at people who cling to life and livelihood the only way they know how. And always, she senses the pulse of the natural world -- beautiful, transformative, and populated with the perceptions of animal minds.

Shortlisted, Independent Publishers Book Award, PoetryThe Qingming Shanghe Tu scroll, sometimes called "Spring Festival by the River," was thought to have been painted by Zhang Zeduan before 1127, when the Northern Song capital of Bian-Iiang was overrun by the invading Jin. Inspired by the figures in the scroll, Geddes found stories demanding to be told, tales of the droll, exacting, sometimes turbulent life of cities. In shimmering verse, Geddes captures the voice of the painter himself and those of the underprivileged, with their not-so-subtle forms of dissent. Cleverly illustrated to intertwine East and West in dialogue, this ingenious volume juxtaposes a reproduction of the scroll that reads from back to front (experienced as Chinese reads) with Geddes' poems, which read from front to back.

Authentic. Original. Inimitable. Mary Majka is one of Canada’s great pioneering environmentalists. She is best known as a television host, a conservationist, and a driving force behind the internationally acclaimed Marys Point Western Hemispheric Shorebird Reserve on the Bay of Fundy. Sanctuary gives full expression to the intensely personal story of Mary’s life. A daughter of privilege, a survivor of World War II Poland, an architect of dreams, Mary Majka became a passionate environmentalist intent on protecting fragile spaces and species for generations to come. In this amazing story of determination and foresight, Deborah Carr reveals a complex, indomitable, thoroughly human being — flawed yet feisty, inspiring and inspired.

The campaign in Afghanistan transformed Canada into a warrior nation. What does this say about our country and its future? "A country once proud of its role as a peace-making moderate is being reconstructed as a Canada defined by war, violence and death. Noah Richler has taken the trouble to tell us why Canadians should worry." -- Desmond Morton, author of Who Speaks for Canada? "A fine polemic . . . You don't have to agree with everything Noah Richler says -- I don't -- but you must take him seriously." -- Margaret MacMillan, author of Paris 1919 "A tonic to the spirit, Richler's book explores the rootedness of Canadian values and connects them to the experience of life in an enormous and damn lucky country." -- James Laxer, author of Tecumseh and Brock "Noah Richler has written an important book of great clarity, insight and courage. This book deserves to be read and discussed in every political office, classroom, book club and legion hall in the country." -- Ron Graham, author of The Last Act

In this splendid new collection, Jeffery Donaldson shifts deftly between the incisive short lyric and the extended meditation, oscillating between detachment and engagement. In "Torso," the headless sculpture of Apollo is both chiselled rock and the changeling child of multiple observers. In "Enter, PUCK," elements of a hockey game twist in the fascinating funhouse mirror that lines the depths of Donaldson's personal Platonic cave. Revealing a mind at once conversant with literary deities and the subtleties of the everyday, Guesswork confirms that exacting craftsmanship, supple syntax, and an unerring sense of rhythm are everything but guesswork.

On the same fateful day, two adolescents escape destinies that would scar them for the rest of their lives. Romain, awkward and contemplative, resolves to abandon a lineage of wealth. Éléna, resourceful and single-minded, flees a home of blood and thunder. From the initial meeting of these two wounded souls, Christine Eddie weaves a fable for all times. As the story ensnares others within its elegant web -- a doctor nursing a bruised heart, a teacher harbouring dark secrets -- the struggles of a family of singular character transform Eddie's luminous tale into an ode to friendship, a sonnet on our relationship with nature, and a passionate elegy to love.

She's depressed, they say. Apathetic. Bridget Murphy, almost eighteen, has had it with her zany family. When she is transferred to the children's hospital's psych ward after giving birth to a baby and putting it up for adoption, it is a welcome relief -- even with the manic ranting of a teen stripper and lurid come-ons of a young megalomaniac. But this oasis of relative calm is short-lived. Christmas is coming, and Uncle Albert arrives to whisk Bridget back to the bedlam of home and the booze-soaked social life that got her into trouble in the first place. Her grandmother raves from her bed, banging the wall with a bedpan through a litany of profanities. Her father curses while her mother tries to keep the lid on developmentally delayed Uncle Rollie. The baby's father wants retribution, and her friends don't get that she's changed.