Historical Fiction
Canadian Content
Promise Song.
Linda Holeman.
Holeman builds her story around an actual happening in Canadian history. Between 1868
and 1925, more than 80,000 children were sent to Canada, principally from Britain
orphanages or "Homes." During this period, Canada, especially its rural areas, required
much manual labour, and so many of these Home children ended up on small farms in
Eastern Canada. Four years previously, Rosetta's and Flora's surviving parent died, and
the orphaned Westley sisters were placed in the Manchester Refuge. Now, in May, 1900,
they find themselves "home children" being shipped to Canada.
The Shacklands
Judi Coburn
The year is 1908. The Robertson family have left the slums of London, England, for a
better life in Canada. Jessie dreams of becoming a teacher and taking part in the exciting
events unfolding in the new century. But she must battle the prejudices of those around
her, and tragedy soon strikes the family. Jessie finds herself confined to the drudgery of
housework and then a factory job. But when the workers decide to strike, Jessie finds
both a voice and a vision of a stronger, more confident self.
The Only Outcast
Julie Johnston
Words are the bane of my life," 16-year-old Frederick Dickinson candidly admits; he
"never knows whether words will come exploding out like gunshot, or disappear
forever." Fred's stuttering "drives Papa to his wit's end" and triggers Papa's decision to
initiate measures that will force Fred to "face the world like a man." In the meantime,
Fred and his three younger siblings get to spend the summer of 1904 with his maternal
relatives at their cottage, Sunnybank, on Rideau Lake. (Perth)
The death of Fred's mother almost three years before, Papa's unrelenting criticism and
sternness, and the stuttering and awkwardness threaten to crush Fred's spirit. However,
life at the cottage offers freedom and a time to grow beyond feeling "odd man out." Fred
gains confidence as he interacts with his uncritical relatives and affectionate younger
siblings and spends his days leisurely fishing, swimming, boating, and socializing.
Johnston bases this coming of age novel on the actual diary of Fred Dickinson explaining
that the excerpts "are partly invention and partly Fred's own words." Fred is an articulate
narrator whose observations of people and events are remarkably shrewd, sensitive, and
mature. "If you want to know everything that goes on in the life of diary writer," he
suggests, "read between the lines."
The Word for Home
Joan Clark.
The year is 1926. Fourteen-year-old Sadie and her eight-year-old sister, Flora, are
struggling with huge changes in their lives. Within a year, they have lost their mother,
moved to Newfoundland from Ontario and have been left by their geologist father in the
care of a mean-spirited landlady, Mrs. Hatch..
Good for Nothing.
Michel Noël.
Good For Nothing is the story of Nipishish, a Metis teenager, from May of 1959 to the
spring of 1961. He leaves the residential school and is sent to a white foster family.
Unable to cope with the abuse, he returns to the reserve where life is idyllic and he meets
his true love again. He steals his files and those of his father from the band office and
discovers that his father was probably murdered by the authorities who wanted this
activist gone, rather than dead from drowning as the official story goes
Love-Lies-Bleeding.
Barbara Haworth-Attard.
Haworth-Attard incorporates segments of World War II letters written by her father
during his six years of Canadian military service in Europe into the story of a young girl's
coming of age. The flower of the title, amaranthus, with its brilliant red, drooping, tassellike flower heads and huge, brightly-coloured leaves, looks like drops of blood. "War
tears apart families, lives and countries and every person war touches has a love lying
bleeding, be it on the battlefield, or a broken heart at home," the author writes in "LoveLies-Bleeding Teachers' & Kids' Resources." With almost daily media reports of the
ongoing violence worldwide, the novel reflects humankind's unfortunate appetite for
conflict.
Forget-Me-Not.
Barbara Haworth-Attard.
Retaining both a floral title and the diary format of the well-received World War II novel,
Love-Lies-Bleeding, Haworth-Attard presents a sequel rich with details of Roberta
"Bobby" Harrison's life and family, May through September of 1945, in London, ON.
Bobby, now 15, struggles to understand why, with the war against Germany over,
returning soldiers like her brother, her best friend's brother, and the men at the hospital
where she works appear irrevocably altered and cannot seem to adjust to their previous
lives.
The Greenies.
Myra Paperny.
Canada accepted just over one thousand Jewish teens that lost their families during World
War II. They were scrutinized by doctors and officials before gaining admission to
Canada and were then sent to live with host families across the country.
These youth had lived adult lives during the war, surviving against all odds. But as
refugees, they were again considered children by all authorities. The families who
welcomed them were often unaware, as most people were unaware, of the extent of the
horrors they experienced in concentration camps or in hiding. The tenor of the times was
that people did not speak about bad events. The psychological trauma they experienced,
the world from which they came, the people they had lost, were not spoken about. The
teenagers were expected to appreciate the charity they were receiving and adapt
immediately to life and the habits of Canadians. As a result, the adjustment for many of
the teens was difficult.
The Girls They Left Behind.
Bernice Thurman Hunter.
In The Girls They Left Behind, protagonist Beryl comes of age and struggles with her
identity and life’s purpose against the backdrop of the last years of World War II in
Toronto. Beryl, emboldened by shifting power dynamics on the homefront, experiments
with a new persona and renames herself “Natalie.”
To Dance at the Palais Royale
Janet McNaughton
This is the touching story of Agnes Maxwell, a beautiful young Scottish girl who
immigrates alone to Toronto in the late 1920s and finds a position as a maid for a wealthy
Toronto family. With feelings of loneliness and homesickness, she keeps her spirits about
with the thought of seeing her family again and bringing them to Canada, with the help of
the money she is earning.Aggie, a seventeen-year-old Scottish girl, travels to Toronto to
work as a domestic servant. Novel explores poverty, class interaction and ethnicity.
Make or Break Spring
Janet McNaughton,
In the spring of 1945, with the war ending in Europe and her father still missing in action,
15-year-old Evelyn McCallum's life in St. John's, Newfoundland begins to alter in ways
that will change her forever. Sequel to Catch Me Once, Catch Me Twice.
In 1945, 15-year-old Evelyn McCallum finds herself competing with her best friend Peter
and handsome Stan Dawe for the scholarship that bears her father's name. As the war
ends in Europe, Ev's life begins to alter in ways that will change her forever.
Snow Apples
Mary Razzell
V.E. Day, May, 1945, was a time of jubilation for all except Agnes Brary. With the return
of her husband, the monthly service cheques from which she had so diligently saved to
purchase land and a new house, ended. Sixteen-year-old Sheila Brary, the only girl in a
family of five, is the object of her mother's frustrations, disappointments, and scorn.
Although Sheila is bright and intent upon becoming a nurse, she learns that as a girl, life
is unfair. She cannot do and have certain things: girls dare not drink, smoke, or fool
around. Nels is her first boyfriend and when she becomes pregnant, she faces alienation,
humiliation, and fear.
Runaway at Sea.
Mary Razzell.
So reads an article in a newspaper left behind in a San Francisco diner where 16-year-old
Anne McLaughlin-Scott is having breakfast with Michael Smith, a former neighbour.
Their meeting in San Francisco is purely chance. With her parents on vacation, Anne is
supposed to connect with her grandmother, the headmistress of a private girls' school in
Victoria, BC. But Nana's arrival in the Bay City is delayed, and Anne is alone in the city
and on her way to see a science fair display when she sees a familiar-looking young man
affixing an anti-war poster to a lamp post (it's 1970, and the Vietnam War is still going
strong). Five years her senior and a journalism student at Berkley, Michael is heading to
Canada to evade the draft and continue his protest work.
White Wave
Mary Razzell
Jenny John lives with her mother and sister in a small British Columbia coastal
community. World War II has ended but her father has not yet returned from combat.
Pure Spring.
Bian Doyle.
Martin O’Boyd, the tragic protagonist of Boy O’Boy, returns in this sequel in which
Martin is now a 15-year-old who has moved to live with Grampa Rip. Rip is not Martin’s
grandfather. Rip is the grandfather of Martin’s hero, Buz Sawyer, who is off fighting in
the Korean War.
Boy O’Boy.
Brian Doyle.
Martin O'Boy, often called Boy O'Boy, lives an unrelievedly grim life in Ottawa as
World War II is winding down. At the beginning of the story, his granny dies, his family
is being investigated by two church ladies who think that his parents are not taking proper
care of him, and he finds out his best friend Billy Batson's father isn't a war hero either,
but in a lunatic asylum. Martin thinks that he finally has a chance for something good
when he is invited to join a choir for which he will receive pocket money. Even this turns
into something more along the lines of his regular existence when Mr. George, the choir's
organist, who had been treating him to movies, sundaes and days out, molests him.
Easy Avenue
Brian Doyle
Gr 7-9-Hulbert "Hubbo" O'Driscoll is a teenaged golf caddy about to start high school.
Things are going from bad to worse as he finds true love in the form of Fleurette
Featherstone Fitchell and true hate in the form of the elitist Hi-Y club. Life looks fairly
grim for this lad, his friends, and his guardian, Mrs. O'Driscoll, but the fortunes are
smiling on this hapless orphan, and he is canny enough to nod his head and smile right
back. The story takes place in post-World War II Canada where society cruelly draws the
lines between rich and poor. Doyle's writing takes star billing in this perfectly crafted,
rollicking read. The narrative is colorful, with some delightfully comic moments, and the
story and language are completely accessible to teens. The character list at the end with
brief Hubboized synopses is a fun way to wrap up this great rags-to-riches tale with a
surprising twist at the end.Angel Square
Brian Doyle.
A younger Tommy than readers first met in Up to Low ¹, is the lively, endearing hero
who sets out to solve the mystery surrounding the beating of his friend's father at the
hands of an unidentified anti-Semite. The stage, where action, characters, emotions and
moods converge, is Angel Square, in reality located in Lower Town Ottawa, 1945 but,
figuratively any where that love, prejudice, joy, anxiety, anticipation and youthful
exuberance abound.
"Dead Girl-Bag": The Janet Smith Case as Contaminant in Sky Lee's Disappearing
Moon Café
Tanis MacDonald
In her 1990 novel Disappearing Moon Café, Sky Lee capitalizes upon the slipperiness of
public and private historical narrative in order to examine the cultural codes of race and
gender in 1920s Vancouver. Lee uses the unsolved 1924 Janet Smith murder case as a
correlative to the fictional Wong family's history, creating a counternarrative of ChineseCanadian history that questions historical master narratives. Smith's murdered body
functions both as a contaminant that infects the Wong's family history, and as a catalyst
that inspires their familial regeneration and prosperity. The novel's staggered narrative
also emphasizes the ways in which the Wong family's history resists completion and
dismantles the generational story's traditional trope of defining the self through family. If
Smith's death signalled the need for greater social and cultural tolerance, then her
reinstatement as a referent in Lee's novel demands a broader perspective of Canadian
history and citizenship.
Turn of the Century
Pit Pony
Barkhouse, Joyce.
Joyce Barkhouse is a believer in education. Barkhouse's latest novel, Pit Pony, not only
educates about life in a coal-mining town in turn-of-the-century Cape Breton but reflects
the importance of education itself.Gives a portrayal of life in a company mining town in
Cape Breton..
Anne of Green Gables.
Montgomery, L.M. (1908).
This internationally acclaimed book depicts social mores and daily life in rural Prince
Edward Island in latter half of nineteenth century.
Ten-year-old Marie-Claire encounters poverty, filth, and a smallpox epidemic in 1885
Montreal.
Maata's Journal: A Novel
Paul Sullivan.
Stranded on an island during a mapping expedition in 1923-4, a 17-year-old Inuit girl
writes about her life on the tundra and the changes brought about by the intrusion of
European culture on the traditional way of life.
Rebecca
Carol Matas.
Rebecca, a Jewish girl, goes to live with a Ukrainian family in Winnipeg's north end in
the 1910s, and faces conflicts between the two groups.
These are some of the terrifying thoughts that run through Rebecca Bernstein's head
when she discovers she is being placed in a foster home. Her extended family, the
Churchill/Bernstein clan, has relocated to Winnipeg to find work and lodgings after
losing everything - home, belongings, and money - in a fire at its Saskatchewan farm.
.
Canada and World War One
Irish Chain.
Haworth-Attard, Barbara.
Rose and her family experience the devastating effects of the Halifax explosion.
This exciting story will pair nicely with a unit on World War I or Canadian history.
Rose's story is involving and touching and will be meaningful to any student who has had
to work hard to learn how to read. The characters are well-rounded, and Haworth-Attard
is given ample opportunity to show what they are made of in their reactions to the
tragedy. The novel gives a clear picture of class divisions in Halifax at the time and will
offer something to any reader interested in history.
Flying Geese.
Haworth-Attard, Barbara.
Set in Saskatchewan and Ontario during World War I
Twelve-year old Margaret and her family leave their farm in Saskatchewan to live in
London, Ontario, where they deal with poverty and the anxiety of having a son and
brother overseas. The theme of quilting as a means of expression for women weaves
through this book.
A Bushel of Light
Troon Harrison
Six years ago, Maggie was torn from her twin sister and sent to Canada as a Barnardo
Home child. Orphaned and completely alone, she found herself living with the Howards,
a falling-apart family with a falling-apart farm. Now, just 14 years old in 1910, Maggie is
already responsible for a great deal of the farm work, and the care of the Howards' fouryear-old daughter, Lizzy.
Maggie is meant to stay on the farm for seven more years, but then how will she ever find
her sister again? With the words "run away" whispering through her head, Maggie
struggles to find a way to save both herself and Lizzy.
The bond between twins is known to be strong, and between identical twins even
stronger. Maggie and Thomasina are two halves of a whole until they are six when their
father is drowned and their mother dies in childbirth. For a short time, they remain
together while living with their uncle and his family, but then Maggie is sent first to the
Bernardo Home in London, England, and then on to Canada to the Howard farm near
Peterborough, ON. Thomasina stays behind in Wales to look after an aunt. Maggie, while
missing her twin desperately, resents that she has to slave on the farm far from home
while Thomasina, obviously the preferable and preferred twin, is living with family who
love and care for her.
On the whole, the story flows smoothly and sheds an interesting light on the way
children were shipped about the world, useful commodities in a time of labor shortage
Home Child.
Barbara Haworth-Attard.
It is 1914, and the Wilson family has secured a Home Child as agricultural help for the
seemingly endless work required to keep their rural Ontario farm afloat. With the
exception of their father, the Wilsons are a family of females, and there is no one to help
Mr. Wilson with the livestock and heavy outdoor chores.
Enter 13-year-old Arthur who has been sent to Canada from England because his
sickly mother can no longer care for him.
No Man's Land.
Kevin Major
Describes the men of the Newfoundland Regiment at the Battle of the Somme in 1916.
Rilla of Ingleside.
Montgomery, L.M.
This poignant story describes the anguish of life on the homefront in rural Prince Edward
Island. Rilla is Anne Shirley's (of Anne of Green Gables) youngest daughter.
Charlie Wilcox
Sharon E McKay.
Fourteen-year-old Charlie Wilcox accidentally boards a ship taking Newfoundland
soldiers to the front, and finds himself an under-age medic in France during the First
World War.
Three years later, Charlie is now at home, and in a series of flashbacks told to Claire Guy,
a childhood friend who is now quite attractive in a way that he hadn't quite noticed
before, he tells his story of the war that he remembers. It is not a glamorous war: life is a
dreary existence spent in mud-lined trenches or in the blood and stench of the field
hospitals in which Charlie assists. Friends die, sometimes heroically, sometimes
ignominiously, all in the service of decisions made by politicians far from the horrors of
the front. This book pulls no punches about the hell that is war.
Generals Die in Bed: A Story From the Trenches.
Charles Yale Harrison.
Chronicles the disillusionment of a young soldier facing the horror and inhumanity of
war.
From Montreal to major battles of the Western Front - Bethune, Arras, Amiens - Harrison
provides graphic detail of the atrocities of war.
An introduction by Robert Nielson providing an overview of the historical context, a
map of the Western Front setting the geography, and five grainy black-and-white
photographs are included for the benefit of the target young adult audience. The graphic
descriptions of life in the trenches and on the killing fields may disturb some young
readers, as may the obvious pessimism of the protagonist. Generals Die in Bed is no
gentle treatise on war; it stands as a reminder of the insanity of using warfare to solve
political problems, of sacrificing human beings for ideological purposes
Great Canadian War Stories.
Whitaker, Muriel. (Ed.).
Shows how the experience of Canada at war captured the imagination of fiction writers
across the country. With selections from Timothy Findley, Joy Kogawa, Louis Caron,
Thomas H Raddall, Earle Birney, Roch Carrier and others, this book chronicles the scope
of Canadian war efforts in the first half of the twentieth century. From the trenches of the
Western Front to the plains of the Spanish Civil War, from the skies of North Africa to
the jungles of Borneo, Canadian writers present the face of war in its many guises. There
are women and children who have lost their homes, and men who have lost their dreams
and lives. There are strangers brought together by accident and bound in loyalty. There
are adventurers and deserters, volunteers and victims, all revealed with an unmistakable
authenticity of voice.
As Whitaker puts it, "These are stories of individuals, generally taking the form of fiction
basedon personal experience." (Adult book)
Winnipeg Strike
Goodbye Sarah.
Bilson, Geoffrey & Berg, Ron.
Mary Jarrett's father is an organizer of the General Strike. The family endures financial
hardship and Mary's relationship with her best friend is destroyed as a result of tensions
related to the strike . With their fathers on opposite sides of the strike, Sarah and Mary
find that their friendship is impossible.”.
1920s
Mary Ann Alice.
Doyle, Brian
Describes loss of farmland on Gatineau River due to damming for hydro-electric power.
In 1926, Canadian seventh-grader Mary Ann Alice McCrank, named after her church's
bell and proudly possessing the soul of a poet, describes the changes the new Paugan
Dam will bring to her riverside town of Low and also carefully plans her first kiss.
A Prairie as Wide as the Sea: The Immigrant Diary of Ivy Weatherall (Dear Canada
Series)
Ellis, Sarah.
Describes the fictional experiences of a British family who emigrate to Saskatchewan and
their initial experiences there. Diary is accompanied by historical notes and photographs.
Amy's Promise.
Hunter, Bernice Thurman.
Describes family interaction set in Toronto.
Thurman Hunter is especially adept at evoking time and place, infusing her stories with a
quality of warm reminiscence. She evokes Toronto during the 1920s as Amy and her
brothers gather around the radio to listen to "Amos and Andy," take a ride on the trolley,
and contentedly munch on brown-sugar sandwiches. Part of the great charm of the book
lies in Amy's ability to find joy in such simple pleasures. A sleep-over at Winnie's house,
a new pair of grey suede shoes, and the soothing rhythm of a piano all make Amy feel
like she's the luckiest girl in the world.
Great Depression Period
Messenger.
Virginia Frances Schwartz
Born only a week after the tragic death of her father, Frances Chopp grows up believing
that she was sent to earth as her father’s messenger to pull her mother out of her grief.
And in the years that follow, Frances tries to make sense of the hard times that have
struck her immigrant family, even as she struggles to understand the puzzle of her
family’s past. Set in the mining and steel towns of Southern Ontario in the years between
the wars, Messenger is a moving story of familial love and the determination to survive.
Based on the lives of the author's mother and grandmother, tells the story of a widowed
Croatian immigrant trying to keep her family together in the mining towns of Ontario in
the 1920s and 1930s.
Based on the lives of Virginia Frances Schwartz's mother and grandmother, this eloquent
novel relates the struggles of a Croatian immigrant family during the 1920s and 1930s.
Frances Chopp narrates the story, starting with her own birth. Her father dies in a mining
accident one week before she is born. Frances believes she is her father's messenger, sent
to pull her grief-stricken mother out of deep despair. Life in rural Cobalt, Ontario, is
extremely harsh. Mining disasters claim many lives. With little food, isolation, severe
snowstorms and floods, widowed families are like "spiders clinging to a web trying to
stay alive." The Chopps decide to leave Cobalt for a better life, and, along with newly
arrived relatives, they plan on running a boardinghouse in Southern Ontario. Through
determination, grueling work, and the help of a loving, supportive extended family, the
Chopps eventually prosper.
Hobo Jungle (Our Canadian Girl Series)
Harris, Dorothy Joan.
After meeting Will, who has lost his farm, Ellen decides that she is grateful for what she
has.
The Depression and its effects on people are difficult for a 10-year-old to understand.
Ellen only knows she isn't happy that her family has to live with Grandpa Sanders now
that her father has lost his job, or that she must do without new clothes or a piano. Worst
of all, she has no friends in this Vancouver neighbourhood. When an unemployed man,
Will, asks to do odd jobs in return for a meal, she befriends him and learns of his family
back on the prairies. Ellen discovers firsthand that many are much worse off than she.
That Scatterbrain Booky (1981).
Hunter, Bernice Thurman. Trilogy.
Booky is a child of the Depression, with a father who resents having to "go on relief," an
older sister who wonders if she should quit school and look for work as a waitress, a
mother valiantly stretching not enough food over too many days.
With Love from Booky (1983).
Discover Depression-era Toronto through the eyes of the spunky young girl we first met
in That Scatterbrain Booky ¹, winner of the 1981 IODE Award and runner-up in that
year's City of Toronto Book Awards. Now Booky is twelve, going on thirteen. Having
outgrown her "scatterbrain" stage, she has become an aspiring writer. Hence the letters,
complete with delightful malapropisms, signed "With love from Booky."
As Ever, Booky (1985).
Irrepressible Booky, with her big imagination and even bigger plans can tackle anything.
This book contains three of her stories; "That Scatterbrain Booky", "With Love from
Booky" and "As Ever, Booky".)
Five Pennies: A Prairie Boy's Story.
Irene Morck,.
Morck gives a loving portrayal of her father's life as a member of a large family living on
farms in Saskatchewan and Alberta from 1916-1939.
Summer of the Mad Monk
Taylor, Cora.
Twelve-year-old Pip and his family cope with the difficulties of living in the Dust Bowl
of rural Alberta. Pip suspects immigrant blacksmith is Rasputin, the infamous figure from
the Russian Revolution.
This novel readily links to any study of World War I and the Russian Revolution
Chinese Immigrant Experiences
The Concubine's Children
Chong, Denise.
This biographical account describes the author's mother's and grandparents' experiences
in Vancouver and Nanaimo Chinatowns. (Adult book)
The Jade Peony.
Choy, Wayson.
Set in Vancouver's Chinatown in the late 1930s and 1940s, this novel describes the
mingling of new immigrants with people who have lived there for many years. (Adult
book)
Emily: Across the James Bay Bridge (Our Canadian Girl Series).
Julie Lawson.
Set in 1896, Victoria, BC, Hing, the Chinese cook employed by Emily's family, is saving
to pay the $50.00 head tax in order to bring his family from China.
Breakaway.
Paul Yee.
Describes the financial hardship and racial intolerance from point of view of Kwok-Ken
Wong, an eighteen-year-old Chinese soccer player living on a mudflat farm by the Fraser
River during the Great Depression.
Paul Yee has written a rich and detailed account of one boy's life in the Chinese
community around Vancouver during the Great Depression. Kwok-ken Wong works hard
on his father's farm, studies intensively to meet his mother's ambition for him to attend
university, and plays soccer with the school team. Poverty plagues the farm, and racism
in the white community undermines his other activities
The Curses of Third Uncle.
Paul Yee.
Lilian Ho, who is living in Vancouver's Chinatown in 1909, is learning New World ideas
about possibilities for females. Novel is set against a backdrop of a struggle to overthrow
the Chinese Emperor.
Lillian Ho is a fourteen-year-old girl living with her family in Vancouver's Chinatown, in
the year 1909. Her mother is overburdened with work and children; her father is
frequently absent on mysterious business. When he fails to return from a trip, the family's
circumstances deteriorate. Finally, Third Uncle threatens to send them back to China. He
frightens Lillian and her sisters with unpleasant stories about China, and how girls are
treated there. Her mother can see no other solution, so Lillian undertakes to get a job and
to find her father.
.
Tales from Gold Mountain: Stories of the Chinese in the New World
Paul Yee.
Eight stories represent the 19th Century Chinese experience in Canada.
Tales from Gold Mountain is a collection of eight original folktales about Chinese
immigrants in North America with accompanying illustrations by Simon Ng. Each tale is
relatively short, no more than two or three pages, but each one deals with some very
important themes such as prejudice, racism and dishonesty, generally unpleasant topics
for children's stories. But that is the nature of the folktale and Paul Yee uses it skilfully to
give us glimpses into the hardships faced by the Chinese as they tried to make a new life
in Canada. It is also a glimpse of the conflict between old customs and new ideas. In one
tale, for example, a young man leaves China in search of his father who has not been
heard from since he left for Canada. While he searches, the young man finds work laying
the tracks for the railroad. It is difficult and often dangerous work. Eventually, Chu
speaks with his father's spirit, who tells the story of his death and demands a proper
resting place. Chu is able to perform the necessary deed and the work on the railroad
resumes.
Canada and World War Two
Catch Me Once, Catch Me Twice.
Janet McNaughton.
Describes home front in St. John's, Newfoundland, 1942; family relationships,
friendships, class issues, and anguish about a father who is missing in action overseas.
Evelyn and her pregnant mother arrive in St. John's, Newfoundland, from an out-port
community to stay with her grandparents while her father is gone to fight in World War
Two. Things are difficult for Evelyn. Her mother is not well, she misses her father and
her home, and her grandmother seems cold and unfeeling. Gradually Ev makes friends
with Peter, a classmate her grandmother disapproves of as coming from "the wrong side
of the tracks." She also comes to know Peter's grandmother who is a midwife called in to
see Ev's mother; an elderly fisherman who is teaching Peter how to build boats; and the
outport girl, who is her grand- parents' hired girl.
Listen for the Singing.
Jean Little.
A German-Canadian family living in Toronto is affected by anti-German sentiment.
Camp X
Eric Walters
Jack and George are two young brothers living in Whitby, Ontario in the time of World
War II. Their mother has had to go to work in the local ammunition plant to support the
family while their father is overseas fighting in the war
Camp 30
Eric Walters
In this sequel to Camp X, we meet the brothers, Jack and George, again. They are
recovering from their adventures with the Nazi soldiers and have relocated to
Bowmanville, Ontario. Mom has a new job at the German Prisoner of War Camp that
holds the highest-ranking captured German officers
B for Buster
Iain Lawerence
Iain Lawrence has crafted an incomparable story of 20th century warfare in his gutwrenching novel, B for Buster. It is a story of a young boy who, as a crewman in a
Halifax Bomber, flew bombing missions into Nazi Germany during World War II.
Great Canadian War Stories
,Muriel Whitaker.(ed)
As Whitaker puts it, "These are stories of individuals, generally taking the form of fiction
based on personal experience." (Adult book)
Japanese Internment
Naomi's Road.
Joy Kawaga.
A family is moved from Vancouver to an internment camp near Slocan, B.C.
(Based on the adult novel, Obasan, by same author.)
War of the Eagles.
Eric Walters.
While Jed's dad is in Europe flying Spitfires for the Allied war effort, 14-year old Jed and
Mom move back to her Haida community near Prince Rupert, BC, to live with Naani,
Jed's grandmother. Mom works as a cook at the nearby military base while Jed attends
school in Prince Rupert. Jed's friendship with Tadashi Fukushima from the nearby
Japanese fishing village, Sikima, helps him adjust to the changes that have occurred
because of the war.
Caged Eagles.
Eric Walters
In a sequel to his 1998 award-winning novel, War of the Eagles, Walters focuses on the
Fukushima family, allowing 14-year old Tadashi to narrate the story of a shameful period
in Canada's history. Declared "enemy aliens" following the 1941 Japanese bombing of
Pearl Harbor, Japanese Canadians lost all rights of citizenship. Ordered to leave their
homes, thousands of families along the British Columbia coast could take only minimal
possessions. Japanese-Canadian family from a fishing village on the northwest coast of
British Columbia is sent to an internment centre in Vancouver, and then to a sugar beet<
farm in Alberta.
Post-World War Two
The Old Brown Suitcase: A Teenager's Story of War and Peace.
Lillian Boraks-Nemetz.
The Old Brown Suitcase really has two story lines, told in alternating chapters. The
narrator is Slava, a fourteen-year-old girl who has just arrived in Montreal with her
family. It is 1947 and Slava's family -- the Lenskis -- have emigrated from their beloved
Poland to begin life anew in Canada. They have lost almost everything important during
the war, including Slava's younger sister, Basia.
Jewish girl adjusts to life in Canada, while dealing with memories and emotions related
to her war experiences in Europe.
The Hockey Sweater.
Roch Carrier.
This classic tale of Canada's two solitudes is told from the point of view of a boy living in
rural Quebec.
One Proud Summer.
Hewitt, Marsha & Claire Mackay.
The one hundred day millworkers' strike in Valleyfield, Quebec, 1946, is described from
the perspective of thirteen-year-old Lucie. When her father dies, 13-year-old Lucie
Laplante must quit school and work at the local textile mill in Valleyfield, Quebec, to
help support her family. Terrible working conditions result in Lucie and her fellow
workers going out on strike, which lasts for 100 days. Based on the true story of the 1946
Dominion Textiles strike. Jane Kops
White Wave.
Mary Razzell.
Set in British Columbia, this novel traces a girl's journey toward self-discovery, part of
which involves coming to know her father, who returns from service in the Navy.
Seven For a Secret.
Mary C. Sheppard
Three fifteen year old girls in a fictional coastal village in Newfoundland in the early
1960s cope with impending adulthood and secrets from the past.
Blood Red Ochre.
Kevin Major.
The story of a contemporary girl and boy living in Newfoundland is mingled with the
story ofDauoodaset, one of the last of the Beothuk.
Blood Red Ochre, contrasts the life of the Beothuks with that of modern Newfoundland
youth. His interest in the Beothuks dates to being moved, as a young boy, by the story of
their extinction as a result of disease, the harsh environment, and massacres by the
settlers. As a teacher Major found that his students viewed the Beothuks as part of a
distant period of history. Other books concentrated on their tragic end but Major wanted
to describe their human, everyday existence and show how close they are to young
Newfoundlanders of today. His juggling of present and past tenses is designed to
minimize the time difference, and demonstrate how the important things in life remain
constant.
Ravensong: A Novel.
Lee. Maracle
Seventeen-year-old Stacey lives in a Native village, but attends school in a nearby town.
It is the early 1950s and she is struggling to learn how to balance the values of the two
cultures.
Ravensong deals with the difficult question of cultural identity in a world where different
cultures co-exist in close quarters. The easily to identify with main character, a seventeen
year old girl at the brink of adulthood, balances her family’s traditional ways against the
dominant society’s intrusive new values, knowing that her future lies in both worlds. This
topic should be relevant and captivating for a high school audience.
No Time to Say Goodbye
Sylvia Olsen, , with Rita Morris & Ann Sam.
Children's Stories of Kuper Island Residential School
This fictional account describes the experiences of five Tsartlip First Nations children at
a residential school.
My Name is Seepeetza.
Shirley Sterling
This is a fictional account of one girl in an aboriginal residential school.
Gr. 5^-10. Her name is Seepeetza, but at the Indian residential school in British
Columbia, she is called Martha. She hates her white name, but she is beaten if she talks
"Indian." Her long hair is cut off. At the same time, the other students pick on her
because she has green eyes and looks white. When she wets her bed, the nuns make her
wear the wet sheet over her head. She gets in trouble for daydreaming about the family
ranch on the reservation that she was forced to leave to come to school.
Story Collections
Best Mounted Police Stories.
Dick Harrison.
Reprinted stories organized into four sections: The Trek West and the Early Days, The
North-West Rebellion and After, the Gold Rush and the North, the Twentieth Century
(Adult book)
The Spirit of Canada.
Dick Harrison. (Ed.).
Includes legends, stories, poetry, and songs, written by Canadian authors. Includes 150
illustrations by 15 Canadian children's artists.
This Land: A Cross-Country Anthology of Canadian Fiction for Young Readers.
Kit Pearson. (Ed.).
Pearson has selected twenty-two, mostly historical, pieces that are representative of the
best of Canadian fiction for adolescents.
Beginnings: Stories of Canada's Past.
Anne Walsh.(Ed.).
Fourteen stories describe historical "firsts," including a first meeting between First
Nations and Europeans, the first filles du roi in New France, and a young woman's first
opportunity to vote.
Biographies
Emily Carr: Rebel Artist.
Kate Braid.
Detailed biography accompanied by a timeline of major events in Carr's life and blackand-white photographs.
Other books in this series:
Robert Dunsmuir: Laird of the Mines.
Bowen, Lynne. (1999).
Pauline Johnson: First Aboriginal Voice of Canada.
Tommy Douglas: Building the New Society.
Keller, Betty. (1999).
Margoshes, Dave. (1999).
Norman Bethune: A Life of Passionate Conviction
Wilson, John. (1999).
.
Agnes Macphail: Champion of the Underdog.
Wyatt, Rachel. (1999).
Fictionalized biography of Nellie McClung.
Crook, Connie Brummel. Trilogy
Nellie L. (1994).
Childhood, ages 10 to 17
Young Nellie McClung, the Manitoba farm girl who became Canada's most famous
pioneer for women's rights, struggles to overcome her mother's criticism and the
prejudices of those around her.
Nellie's Quest. (1998).
Schoolteacher
The year is 1896 and Nellie McClung is now a 21-year-old teacher in a small town in
Manitoba. Her thoughts and ideas about women's rights are beginning to take
shape.
Nellie's Victory. (1999).
Marriage, family life and political activism until 1914
Nellie, now married, continues the fight for women's rights.
Nellie McClung: No Small Legacy. Hancock, Lynn. (1996).
Adult level biography. Includes two of McClung's short stories.
Her Story: Women from Canada's Past. Vol. I.
Her Story: Women from Canada's Past. Vol. II.
Her Story: Women from Canada's Past. Vol. III.
Susan E Merritt.
Sixteen biographies in the first two books and 14 in the third, deal with women from
different walks of life and different time periods. Black-and-white photographs and
paintings depict the people and the times.
Willow Wind Blows No Evil.
Jamie D. Kucey.
This title joins the growing body of non-British immigrant fiction which depicts being
"foreign" as adding to the hardships endured by those who came to Canada in the early
1900s.
Willow Wind Blows No Evil tells the story of Eszter, who comes with her family from
Hungary, determined to make a better life for herself . Her memories, dating from those
of her eleven-year-old self up to the celebration of her one hundredth birthday, are
interlaced with present-day events. The author manages to convey these complexities
without using chronological order, which is an accomplishment in itself.
The old Brown Suitcase
Boraks – Nemetz, Lillian
really has two story lines, told in alternating chapters. The narrator is Slava, a fourteenyear-old girl who has just arrived in Montreal with her family. It is 1947 and Slava's
family -- the Lenskis -- have emigrated from their beloved Poland to begin life anew in
Canada. They have lost almost everything important during the war, including Slava's
younger sister, Basia.
Slava must adjust to life in a new country: she needs to learn a new language and adapt to
a foreign culture and school system. She must also cope with the memories of her
childhood. Slava is a survivor of the Holocaust who has witnessed horrific events during
her fourteen years, Through a series of flashbacks, the reader discovers the "other" story
and learns about Slava's childhood in Poland before and during the war. Slava's
adjustment to life in a new country is eased by several special friends and teachers.
Despite the misfortunes and hardships in her life, Slava proves herself to be a creative
individual with a strong will to live.
Lesia's Dream
Langson, Laura
The novel is true to history with Ivan’s socialist, union activities, the imprisonment of
enemy aliens and the pioneer struggles with sod huts, extreme weather and government
bureaucracy. At the same time, it is a compelling story of the horrors faced by a particular
immigrant family who quickly become endeared to the reader. Lesia is a determined,
strong girl whose courage in the face of physical danger and emotional agony is
inspiring. She is the catalyst that pushes her father to immigrate to Canada. She performs
backbreaking work and holds the whole family together with her ingenuity and force of
will.
Fifteen-year-old Lesia and her family journey from the Ukraine to Manitoba in 1914 to
find a new and better life. The unexpected physical hardships and cruel prejudices they
face make them wonder if they should go back home.
The Hydrofoil Mystery
Eric Walters
William McCracken is sent away for the summer of 1915 to work on the Nova Scotia
estate of eccentric inventor, Alexander Graham Bell. He becomes involves in a
hovercraft-like invention, German spies and a submarine.
1945-1970s
Across the Steel River
Ted Stenhouse.
In a 1952 prairie town, two teenage boys discover an Indian war hero badly beaten and
left for dead. When the local police don't act, the two boys do.
The author paints an evocative picture of the prairie town, its residents, and the
pervasive attitude of whites toward the Indians. Through Will's eyes and ears, the reader
learns about the injustices and inequities of life in these circumstances and gains a
heightened understanding of the nature of the relationship between whites and Indians
during this period of history.
Seven for a Secret
Mary C Sheppard
Another story set in a small coastal village in Newfoundland. It's the summer of 1960 and
cousins Melinda, Rebecca, and Kate are making plans for their future, once they finish
their final high school year.
In Bead on an Ant Hill: A Lakota Childhood
Delphine Red Shirt .
In Bead on an Anthill, Delphine Red Shirt narrates her own experiences and those of her
friends and family while living on the Pine Ridge reservation in the 1960s and 1970s.
Intermingling the past with the present, her stories show her increasing awareness of the
connections and differences between her world and the world of her ancestors. She
describes tribal ceremonies, life inside the Pine Ridge Reservation, and events in her
childhood. This easy-to-read memoir, with its vivid images and depictions of Lakota
traditions, offers readers a unique insight into a young girl's journey growing up on the
Pine Ridge reservation and assimilating herself into contemporary American culture.
Students will appreciate this woman's account as she navigates through her childhood,
valuing traditions but also learning to accept a world where Lakota is not the native
language.
Redshirt tells of Jesuit brothers who respected her as a learner.
Novels For Older/Better Readers
Kit's Law
Donna Morrissey
- A Newfoundland author that writes mainly of small town life and fishing. Set in a
remote outport village in Newfoundland in the 1950s, teenager Kit Pitman finds her life
turned upside down when her grandmother dies and she faces being placed in a foster
home.
The novel focuses on 14-year-old Kit Pitman, who lives with her mother and
grandmother in the isolated outport of Haire's Hollow. Morrissey's novel gravitates from
light and dark, painting a picture that contains the sustaining love of the Pitman family,
the condemnation preached by the antagonistic Reverend Ropson, the communal support
of neighbours, and the violence and rage of the murderous village drunk, Shine. Driving
the plot are the dark secrets behind Kit's birth and her relationship to Sid Ropson, the boy
she loves.
Downhill Chance,
Donna Morrissey
Returning to the remote outport world, Morrissey sets this story in the pre-Confederation
years surrounding WWII. Downhill Chance both challenges and supports the notion of
the always-supportive Newfoundland community as the Gale and Osmond families
struggle to survive in the meagre years that led to Newfoundland's union with Canada.
Again, Morrissey's plot is propelled by the unravelling of shameful secrets and the
exposure of psychological wounds
Sylvanus Now.
Donna Morrissey
The novel details the love story of the fisherman Sylvanus and the beautiful Adelaide,
who live in a secluded community in 1950s Newfoundland. Complicating their
relationship is a strong desire to establish themselves through work in the community and
a longing to escape the confining outport world. Sylvanus Now abounds with
contradictions: a small town that both supports and stifles, and an ocean that both
provides and destroys.
The Mountain and the Valley
Ernest Buckler
Novel is set in the years leading up to World War II in Nova Scotia, Canada.
Rockbound
Frank Parker Day
Considered a classic Canadian novel. Looks at a early Nova Scotian fishing town.
Rockbound evokes the power, terror and dramatic beauty
of the Atlantic, and paints a portrait of back-breaking
labour, cunning bitterness and family strife in the decade preceding the first Great War.
The Night Hazel Came To Town
John Ibbitson.
Describes the experiences of a copy boy working for the Toronto Telegram during the
Cold War period of the 1950s Who says they don't make books like they used to? This
Boys'-Own-Paper saga is the kind of rattling good yarn our grandfathers cut their teeth
on. Set in Toronto in 1954, The Night Hazel Came to Town tells the Horatio Alger tale of
seventeen-year-old Lee, who leaves home and father to explore city life. He has barely
arrived in the Toronto train station when he receives a tip about a job and, in the first of
many lucky breaks, finds himself a copy boy at the Toronto Telegram. By the end of the
book, he has worked his way up to being a cub reporter, with many adventures along the
way.
Twelve year old girl travels back to the 1950s, to one of her mother's childhood summers
at the lake.
Cabbagetown
Hugh Garner
Only novel I have read is Looks at the Depression in Cabbagetown, Ontario during the
period in history.
about the desperate escapades of young men and women in Toronto's famous slum during
the depression, was first published in abridged form in 1950 and restored to its full length
in 1968.
Colony of Unrequited Dreams
Wayne Johnston
Writes novels based in Newfoundland, primarily,is a novel about Newfoundland that
centres on the story of Joe Smallwood, the true-life controversial political figure who
ushered the island through confederation with Canada and became its first premier.
Narrated from Smallwood's perspective, it voices a deep longing on the part of the
Newfoundlander to do something significant, "commensurate with the greatness of the
land itself". The New York Times said, "this prodigious, eventful, character-rich book is
a noteworthy achievement: a biting, entertaining and inventive saga.... a brilliant and
bravura literary performance".
Joe Smallwood, an impoverished boy intent on making a name for himself, and Sheilagh
Fielding, a journalist who pens his rise to power, confront their own frailties, secrets, and
mutual love, in a novel of 20th-century Newfoundland.
Custodian of Paradise
Wayne Johnston
It is the waning days of World War II and St. John's is a city of wounded or absent men.
At the beginning of the novel, Fielding - as she is almost universally known - is headed
for Loreburn, a deserted island off the south coast of Newfoundland. She brings two
enormous trunks full of provisions that will make possible an extended stay. Gradually,
we begin to learn what has brought her, a lame woman with a broken heart, to a wild
island populated by horses, dogs and, perhaps, one other person she has never seen. He is
the one who has been shadowing her since she made a mysterious pilgrimage to her
mother's house in New York City more than two decades earlier.
The Birth House
Ami McKay
.The Birth House traces the life of Dora Rare, the only girl in a large Scots Bay
shipbuilding family. Growing up in early 1900s Nova Scotia, she is marked from the
beginning as different, possibly even a witch. In her late teens she becomes an apprentice
to the local midwife, a Cajun returned to her Acadian roots, learning how to assist births
and brew herbal remedies for everything from coughs to preventing pregnancy. But she
also learns about standing up for herself and other women as her personal coming of age
coincides with the First World War, the Halifax Explosion, the Spanish Influenza
epidemic and the ensuing political, social and economic advances for women.
The Girls They Left Behind.
Bernice Thurman Hunter.
In The Girls They Left Behind, protagonist Beryl comes of age and struggles with her
identity and life’s purpose against the backdrop of the last years of World War II in
Toronto. Beryl, emboldened by shifting power dynamics on the homefront, experiments
with a new persona and renames herself “Natalie.” Although Natalie worries about the
friends and relatives who join the war effort and is occasionally resentful about being
“left behind,” she is relatively fulfilled by her new and powerful role in society. The lack
of men in Toronto (and, of course, all over North America) allows women to do work
that directly contributes to the war effort. Natalie finds work making Mosquito planes.
A Place Not Home
Eva Wiseman
After the Hungarian Revolution in 1956, Nelly Adler and her family escape from
Hungary make their way to Canada and begin to adjust.
A Place Not Home, is a promising first novel by a new Winnipeg writer, Eva Wiseman.
Nelly Adler has just celebrated her 13th birthday in her home city of Budapest when the
events of the Hungarian Uprising of October, 1956 make it dangerous for her family to
remain in their home. Their father decides that she and her sister, with their mother and
father, must try to escape from Hungary while the Austrian border is still open.
Leaving behind their home, their friends and almost all their possessions, Nelly's family
make their way by train and then by foot across the border, with plenty of suspense. After
spending some time in a refugee camp in Austria, they decide to come to Canada and
eventually settle in Montreal.
Fall On Your Knees
MacDonald, Ann-Marie
This is a complex tale of love and betrayal, faith and suffering in a Cape Breton, Nova
Scotia family, beginning in the early 1900s.
Deafening
Francis Itani
Deafening by Frances Itani is the story of Grania O'Neill, robbed of her hearing by scarlet
fever at age 5. While her mother is driven by guilt to hope for a miracle to restore her
hearing, it's Grania's grandmother who takes charge, first teaching Grania how to read.
Grania is finally sent to a special school where she learns speech and sign language. She
thrived in school, found a job after graduation, and fell in love with a hearing man.
Shortly after they're married, he's sent off to World War I, and they're forced to
communicate soundlessly via letters, while Grania yearns for his safe return. When her
brother-in-law returns from the war so shell-shocked he cannot speak, the task falls to
Grania to bring him back from his silent world.
Wars
Timothy Findley
When young Canadian Robert Ross enlists as an officer and is sent into the hell and terror
of 1915 Ypres, he is unprepared for the horrors of war. But in the midst of the death and
violence, his own compassion finds voice and he makes a decision that will leave its
mark on him for the rest of his life.
Childhood
Andre Alexix.
Childhood is a poignant exploration of one man's attempt to find balance between his
endless thirst for knowledge and the strangely persistent power of love. Written as a
fictional autobiography, this novel tells the story of middle-aged protagonist Thomas
MacMillan, who, in his struggle to understand himself and his origins, reflects on the
relative isolation of his early life with his unconventional Trinidadian grandmother.
Although Thomas remains intimately attached to both the recollected places of his past
and the city of his present, Ottawa, this novel also reveals the inherent uncertainty of his
ongoing desire for a lasting sense of home.
His protagonist is Thomas MacMillan, an illegitimate child growing up in Petrolia,
Ontario in the 1960s under the guardianship of his miserable and inebrious Trinidadian
grandmother. As a youngster Thomas understands that not only is he an outsider in his
grandmother's house, he is also an outsider in his hometown. Thomas senses that the
neighbours' friendly distance has something to do with his mother's absence, his
grandmother's temper, and in some indefinable way, his brown skin, for which a handful
of vicious little boys call him nigger.the city of his present, Ottawa, this novel also
reveals the inherent uncertainty of his ongoing desire for a lasting sense of home.
The Island Walkers
John Bemrose
The Island Walkers is set in the 1960s in a Canadian town that is the home of
Bannerman’s knitting mills, which is also the largest employer in the area. When
Bannerman sells out to a textile conglomerate called Intertex, life vastly changes for the
town residents employed at the mill.
Central to the story, which is part family saga, is Alf, a mill worker falling in the
footsteps of his father. Alf has worked at the mill for many years, and he is next in line
for the position of foreman. When Intertex takes over and there is an initial round of
layoffs, a union organizer named Boyle comes to town. Boyle’s aim is to start a union for
the mill workers, and the Intertex management and executives and the mill workers are
fraught with anxiety over Boyle’s efforts. Intertex does not want a union controlling their
business, and many of the mill employees are still smarting from a highly unsuccessful
strike they participated in back in 1949, which included Alf.
In the Skin of the Lion
Michael Odjaatje
Michael Ondaatje's In the Skin of a Lion narrates the forgotten stories of those who
contributed to the building of the city Toronto, particularly immigrants and marginal
individuals. In the very first page of the novel, Ondaatje stresses the concern with
personal narratives and the act of storytelling: "This is the story a young girl gathers in a
car during the early hours of the morning [...] She listens to the man as he picks up and
brings together various corners of the story..." (4). Similar to Crossing the River, there is
a framework story, that of a man telling a story to a girl, that opens and ends the novel
and gives coherence to the many personal narratives. Patrick has an audience at two
narrative levels, namely, Hanna at the textual level and the reader at the extra textual one.
The reader is the recipient of the macro story, which is Patrick's act of storytelling, as
well as of the micro stories contained in it.
Willie: A Romance
Heather Robinson
Willie: A Romance is the story of Lilly Coolican, an Ottawa Valley girl who escapes
Renfrew County for pre-World War I Ottawa. The book is in fact Lilly's life as recorded
in her diary, begun at twelve when she got her first camera. Because her deceased father
used to be a "Booth man," Lilly gets her first job as a secretary to lumber baron, J.R.
Booth. She is carried forth by Ottawa's patronage system, thus launching the reader on a
dazzling rendez-vous with history and historical figures as
Lilly eventually becomes a secretary to the Duchess of Connaught, the GovernorGeneral's wife. We meet the Duke and Duchess, their daughter Princess Patricia,R.B.
Bennett, Sir Wilfrid Laurier and his wife Zoe, and John D. Rockefeller Jr.,among others.
As the first of three intended volumes concludes, Lilly is establishing herself as an
Ottawa photographer. Through Lilly's diary, Robertson presents interesting vignettes of
pre-World War I Canada.
The Mystical Rose.
Richard Scrimger
A beautiful novel about the fragility of memory, Mystical Rose is the carefully paced
monologue of a woman in her late eighties with a disordered mind. Now on her deathbed
under the constant care of doctors and nurses, Rose is having a one-sided conversation
with God.
Delving into her past, she revisits herself growing up in Cobourg, Ontario in the twenties.
When her father returns from WWI an empty shell of his former self, she helps the family
by going into service as a maid. Before long, she finds herself married to the scion of the
wealthy family she works for, and transported into a world she doesn’t understand; life
becomes even more difficult when he meets a terrible early death. Through Scrimger’s
lyrical, precise prose and haunting images, Rose is revealed as a woman never quite in
control of her own destiny, still trying to understand her own life.
The Stone Carvers
Jane Urquhart
Set in the first half of the twentieth century, but reaching back to Bavaria in the late
nineteenth century, The Stone Carvers weaves together the story of ordinary lives marked
by obsession and transformed by art. At the centre of a large cast of characters is Klara
Becker, the granddaughter of a master carver, a seamstress haunted by a love affair cut
short by the First World War, and by the frequent disappearances of her brother Tilman,
afflicted since childhood with wanderlust. From Ontario, they are swept into a colossal
venture in Europe years later, as Toronto sculptor Walter Allward’s ambitious plans
begin to take shape for a war memorial at Vimy, France. Spanning three decades, and
moving from a German-settled village in Ontario to Europe after the Great War, The
Stone Carvers follows the paths of immigrants, labourers, and dreamers. Vivid, dark,
redemptive, this is novel of great beauty and power.
Clara Callan
Richard B. Wright
It's the late 1930s and two sisters, Clara and Nora Callan, face the future with both hope
and uncertainty. Clara is a spinster school teacher whose quiet life in a small Ontario
town masks a passion for love and adventure. Nora, her flighty and attractive sister,
escapes to the excitement of New York, where she lands a starring role in a radio soap
opera and becomes a minor celebrity. In a world of Depression and at a time when war
clouds are gathering, the sisters struggle within the web of social expectations for young
women.
Underneath the seemingly ordinary lives of Wright's characters are entire worlds of
emotion that, once entered, become wildly unpredictable. Clara Callan has that capacity
to surprise, to draw the reader behind the facade of convention to where secrets percolate
and sudden, unexpected violence erupts.
Clara and Nora, very different yet inextricably linked, face the future in their own ways,
discovering the joys of love, the price of infidelity, and the capacity for sorrow lurking
beneath the surface of everyday experience. A brilliantly realized, deeply moving novel,
Clara Callan is a masterpiece of fiction.
The Five Books of Moses Lapinsky
Karen X. Tulchinsky
Sonny Lapinsky, a champion Jewish-Canadian boxer, gets his start at the infamous
Christie Pits riots in Toronto, August 1933. As told by Sonny's son Moses, the story of
the fictitious Lapinsky family flashes back and forward in time and place.
In researching the life of his boxer father Sonny, historian Moses Lapinsky uncovers a
pivotal event. On a hot Toronto night in 1933, at an amateur baseball game at Christie
Pits field, four Nazi youths flashed a large black swastika, shouting "Heil Hitler!" Within
seconds, a group of Jewish youths charged at them, trying to grab the flag. One of the
Nazi youths snatches back the banner and breaks free, running with the flag through the
park, setting off a four-hour race riot involving 15,000 people, injuring hundreds, and
sending scores to the hospital.
In this panoramic novel, Karen X. Tulchinsky traces the fortunes of the Lapinskys from
the evening of the riots through World War II and into the 1950s. It is then, in a boxing
ring at Madison Square Garden, that Sonny Lapinsky must decide whether or not to
reconcile with a family torn apart by a violent past — a decision that will affect
generations to come, including his son and future biographer, Moses. Set against the
Great Depression, race riots, and World War II, this family saga about a Jewish boy-cumchampion boxer is filled with humor, sorrow, bravery, folly, and the stuff of everyday
life.
Leaving Earth
Helen Humphreys
Leaving Earth was Helen Humphreys's debut, and it brought the beauty of her poetry into
the story of two women's love of flight and dream to excel, even if it took all their
courage and strength and even their lives. Novice flyer Willa joins Grace, heroine of the
skies, in what becomes an intimate journey of friendship. Yet the clouds that gather
above are echoed by lurking dangers below for Maddy, a young fan of Grace's, and her
Jewish mother and uncle. Anti-Semitism is spreading. Maddy's mother, a true fortuneteller, is beat up by thugs, and the swirl of events reverberates on earth and sky.
Barometer Rising
Hugh MacLennan
Penelope Wain believes that her lover, Neil Macrae, has been killed while serving
overseas under her father. That he died apparently in disgrace does not alter her love for
him, even though her father is insistent on his guilt. What neither Penelope or her father
knows is that Neil is not dead, but has returned to Halifax to clear his name.
Hugh MacLennan’s first novel is a compelling romance set against the horrors of
wartime and the catastrophic Halifax Explosion of December 6, 1917.
Waiting For Time
Bernice Morgan
Waiting for Time traces the descendants of Cape Random in modern Newfoundland,
illustrating an island in the face of the decline of the fishery, but most important, tracing
how the past influences the experiences and memories of current Newfoundlanders.
Waiting for Time also explores a familiar story through a different critical stance,
revealing concealed secrets to its present generation characters, implying that a history
cannot be verifiable or even trusted if it does not consider the ways in which history can
omit, distort or even dismiss certain participants in its narrative. For instance, in
discovering her past, Lav Andrews, the descendant of Random Passage’s Lavinia
Andrews, encounters various versions of it for she asks us: “It is better to have no history
or an imagined one?” Morgan never directly answers this question; however, she implies
that a culture persists through the changing and growing of its history. “A place ... forever
reshaping itself, ... (Will) the Cape ... vanish completely some day(?) ... No, it is the
changing that saves it.”