Prediction: Grace River, the first novel by Roberts Creek author Rebecca Hendry, will be the hot new book in B.C. this year - helped along by her forthcoming appearance at the Festival of the Written Arts in Sechelt this August.
Good writing and good characters make Grace River special. Hendry has published other short fiction before - most famously, her short story Jesse Beautiful was nominated for the 2003 Journey Prize - but when this novel arrived in the manuscript slush piles, she had publishers fighting to sign her up. Brindle & Glass, a B.C. company, was the winner.
The characters she describes are not so unusual. They are no different than most people who grow up in a small town like Grace River and who we meet every day: full of the need to make a living, wanting a good time and searching for honesty within their relationships.
The story is told from four points of view: Jessie, a young mother, whose conflicts run as deep as the river of her home town and who tolerates an ambivalent relationship with her husband, Daniel. His story is more predictable - he'd rather be at home with a cold brew and the hockey game, a pastime that blots out memories. Kali, the hippy, has moved to Grace River to sell herbal teas and tinctures that she hopes will address everyone's ills including those of her self-destructive boyfriend. Then there's Jackson, one of the few who sees the truth as others do not. We know he will ultimately leave town with or without his alcoholic wife.
And there's a fifth character that dominates the action: the Axis smelter, biggest employer in town, purveyor of pollutants and destroyer of health. The book's locale is loosely based on the smelter town of Trail, B.C. Hendry was first inspired to write about it when she heard mothers in that area calmly discussing the lead levels in their children's blood. When an environmentalist from the city arrives in town to test the river for pollutants, it is his quiet manner that will awaken Jessie to other possibilities for her life.
Grace River is available for $19.95 at bookstores.
There are no shades of grey for Sechelt author Jancis M. Andrews - only black and white. Her intrinsic sense of justice is apparent on each page of her latest book, Walking on Water, a collection of ten short stories published by Cormorant Press.
Her characters rage against their lot, whether the character is an elderly store clerk who mounts a hopeless campaign to save a heritage building from the wrecking ball or the wonderful Lucy Gustavson of the title story, Walking on Water, who has been denied her right to sing before the Queen. Lucy makes her own peace against this injustice in the typical, dramatic way that Andrews' characters do - passionately and full bore.
Country of Evil, the opening story, is an award winner; it won Event's creative non-fiction prize and was a finalist for the Western Magazine Awards. It is also the most autobiographical and describes the author, age seven, in England during WWII. It's clear who the bad guys are when the bombs are dropping. But could evil begin at home, too? After a section of the child's neighbourhood is bombed, she explores the wreckage and discovers that she has a stalker, a man as evil as any Nazi.
One of the most powerful stories, Big Girl, is about other passions. Set in the "fleshy 50s," as Andrews calls that decade of cheesecake and double standards, the story describes the dynamic between a voluptuous, Marilyn Monroe look-alike and her blonde niece who is struggling with her own pains of adolescence. In this decade, there are good girls and bad girls and auntie is clearly in the latter.
Andrews' own background is fraught with the same tension as in her book. At 14 she ran away from a troubled home in Northumbria, England, and was sent to reform school. Later she joined the navy. After immigrating to Canada with her husband and family, she began a long process of education, achieving her degree at age 53. Her sense of justice has come to bear on many community issues where she is usually fighting for the rights of women and children. Andrews has been active in bringing the abuses of the polygamous fundamentalist sect in Bountiful to the public's attention. She is a champion of women, and these stories will appeal to any woman's fighting spirit.
Walking on Water is available for $21 at Tale-wind Books.
