Remind Me

Dora Dueck is the author of the novel Under the Still Standing Sun and co-editor of Northern Lights: An Anthology of Contemporary Christian Writing in Canada. Join us at McNally Robinson Grant Park on Wednesday May 19, 2010 at 8:00 pm to celebrate the launch of her new book This Hidden Thing.

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On my night table are two books of historical fiction. Denise Giardina's Emily's Ghost (W.W. Norton, 2009) is a novel of the Bronte sisters, especially the brilliant and unconventional Emily. Giardina postulates a love story involving her and the curate William Weightman, champion of mill workers and labour rights. What this book has done is send me back to Wuthering Heights, which I first read in my youth and whose power I remember but whose details I've forgotten.

--- Joan Thomas' Curiosity (McClelland & Stewart, 2010), which probably needs little introduction to McNally Robinson readers, is the story of Mary Anning, finder of fossil "curiosities" in Lyme Regis, England, and perhaps "the most significant paleontologist of her day," as the jacket copy puts it. The setting of place and period is drawn so well, it makes me want to go there, and to learn more. (Isn't it interesting how that which is most perfectly realized in a book awakens desire, even as it satisfies?)

--- And, something quite different, a book of prose reflections by poet John Terpstra, Skin Boat: Acts of Faith and Other Navigations (Gaspereau Press, 2009). Terpstra weaves together thoughts about church, wood working, illness, the saints Brendan and Cuthbert, and much more. It's a beautifully produced book and a quieting-down pleasure to read.