We haven't heard as much these days from noted B.C. author Andreas Schroeder since he left Arthur Black's CBC radio show, where he spent 12 years reporting on ingenious frauds, swindles and scams, all of them told with Schroeder's storytelling flair.
Of course, the Roberts Creek author has continued to write; he's produced 20 books over his lifetime. Some of the better known are Dustship Glory (1986), and more recently, he received the Red Maple Award for a children's book, Thieves (Annick Press), more stories of heists and escapades. He's been nominated for other awards including the Governor General's award (1976) for a memoir, Shaking It Rough, and he currently holds a chair in creative non-fiction at the University of British Columbia's creative writing program.
Not a bad career for a Mennonite boy of immigrant parents growing up in the Fraser Valley, where the very acts of enjoying reading and writing marked him as different and where holding a library card was considered ungodly. Schroeder draws on memories of his youth and family in his latest novel, Renovating Heaven, three interconnected stories published by Oolichan Press and available at bookstores for $18.95.
Schroeder will read from his book on Friday, Nov. 21, at 7 p.m. at the Sunshine Coast Arts Centre in Sechelt in a special evening that combines both book launch and reading. The three stories are funny, clever, idiosyncratic accounts of growing up as a Mennonite influenced by various characters: his sisters, his mother, his first girlfriend, his uncles and, primarily, his intractable father.
"The novel is indeed very autobiographical, but there's just enoughartifice and manipulation of the facts in it todisqualify it as pure non-fiction," said Schroeder.
In the book, Schroeder points out that for Mennonites of his father's generation, the term "writer" was virtually synonymous with "liar" and "rascal."
The book is called a "novel in triptych" by the publishers to describe a trilogy of long stories. (As visual artists know, a triptych is a group of three painted panels, often thematically linked, though each can stand alone.)
The first story, Eating my Father's Island, will become a classic in Canadian literature. It is a humorous, bitter-sweet tale of an immigrant farmer, Reinhard Niebuhr, who wins a prize, a piece of land in Howe Sound, that jettisons him into the world of the "English" - that is, anyone who is not a Mennonite. The second story, Renovating Heaven, is about the pursuit of happiness for the Niebuhr farming family who have moved to Vancouver where father must fix up an old house. His impatient son, Peter, grasps the concept of eternity that is understood fully by anyone occupied with home renovation. The boy is growing up fast and moving away from his roots, helped along by his free-thinking girlfriend, Carle. In the last story, Toccata in D, Peter completes his journey as an earnest 25-year-old travelling back to Germany with his uncle to root out family history and secrets.
Oolichan Books will host a book launch at 7 p.m. for Renovating Heaven, the same night as the Arts Council's literary committee will be hosting a reading from Schroeder planned as part of their fall series. The launch will feature the return of Schroeder's character, Pender Harbour bylaw enforcement officer Fred Barker, who last spoke at the Howard White appreciation night last January. The reading will start at 8 p.m., Friday, Nov. 21, at the Arts Centre. Admission is free, courtesy of the Canada Council and the Sunshine Coast Arts Council.
