A literary saga, spanning two generations and two cultures, Canadian and Japanese, reminiscent in writing style and appeal to the work of Isabel Allende. Suddenly finding herself motherless at the age of six, Vera is left in the care of her grandfather, who spends long periods away at sea, leaving her alone back in Vancouver. When she reaches her teens, Vera is taken by her grandfather's mistress to a small island in Japan. After years of loneliness, she finds a place where she can feel comfortable. The women of the island take her in and she learns to dive for pearls. Immersed in her surroundings, she meets a mysterious stranger, a man who is trained as a ceremonial sword polisher, who brings her into touch with the outside world. Every day, they listen to the mounting rhetoric on the radio and must live with the knowledge of the havoc that the Japanese are wreaking in China. Then the worst happens. Vera is forced to return to Canada by a father whom she has long thought is dead. World War Two breaks out. The idyll is over. But Vera never forgets her island life, the sword polisher, or her true identity. Determined to regain the passion and joy that she once knew, she must return to Japan, to the one place that she truly belonged.

Three Views of Crystal Water

Literature & Fiction

katherine-govier

Contemporary

Fourth Estate

A literary saga, spanning two generations and two cultures, Canadian and Japanese, reminiscent of the work of Isabel Allende. Suddenly finding herself motherless at the age of six, Vera is left in the care of her grandfather, who spends long periods away at sea, leaving her alone back in Vancouver. When she reaches her teens, Vera is taken by her grandfather's mistress to a small island in Japan. After years of loneliness, she finds an island where she can feel comfortable. The women of the island take her in and she learns to dive for pearls. Immersed in her surroundings, she meets a mysterious stranger, a man who is trained as a ceremonial sword polisher, who brings her into touch with the outside world. Every day, they listen to the mounting rhetoric on the radio and must live with the knowledge of the havoc that the Japanese are wreaking in China. Then the worst happens. Vera is forced to return to Canada by a father whom she has long thought is dead. World War Two breaks out. The idyll is over. But Vera never forgets her island life, the sword polisher, or her true identity. Determined to regain the passion and joy that she once knew, she must return to Japan, to the one place that she truly belonged.

Harper-perennial

Three Views Of Crystal Water

HarperCollins Publishing

Without a Guide : Contemporary Women's Travel Adventures

Travel

Rivers Oram Press/Pandora List

Between Men

British & Irish

Penguin Putnam~trade

At eighty-five, Cory Ditchburn has finally agreed to a retrospective of her art. For years she had refused, afraid that any summing up of her life's work would mean she'd never work again. But now vanity has won out - vanity and the need to see it all one more time.As she sorts through her photographs with Tyke, the son she abandoned for her lover and for World War II, each image projects Cory into one of the split-seconds that have strung themselves together as her life. Her pictures give her back the story of her past - from her beginnings in Pointe au Baril, Ontario, a place of rocky islands and forests; to her days in London, England, where she honed her skills as a photographer and met the great love of her life; to war-ravaged Europe where she worked as a war correspondent for Lord Beaverbrook, travelling with the ranks of soldiers, earning fame as "the girl photographer"; to her self-imposed exile at a fishing cabin in Safe Harbour.Together, Cory and Tyke retrace the dramatic and sometimes painful path that has led them to the present. Mother and son reclaim each other, and relive an extraordinary woman's life.

Angel walk

Little, Brown (USA)

<p>Katherine Govier was immersed in writing a magazine article for Toronto Life about violent girl gangs when she realized she wanted to use the material in a novel. Having two teenaged children at home allowed her to eavesdrop as she researched the characters for her novel. One character in particular intrigued her: Cassandra, the truth teller. In The Truth Teller, the Manor School for Classical Studies is an exclusive private institution in a leafy enclave of Toronto, dedicated to redeeming the wayward children of the well-to-do. For generations, Headmaster Dugald Laird and his wife, Francesca Morrow, united by romance and a common purpose, have laboured to fill their students' hearts and minds with the ideals of truth and beauty. Now, increasingly, the classes only divide the students' time between cigarette breaks, graffiti wars and drug deals; the teenagers have "headphones clamped to their ears and rings pierced into their crotches," and a habit of carving their own flesh. Enter the new girl, Cassie. Overweight, unfashionable and nervous, she also has an annoying habit of blurting out uncomfortable truths. Offering assistance during a savage street fight, she is recruited into the rebel girl gang known as the Dead Ladies. Meanwhile, cracks are beginning to show in the perfect marriage shared by Dugald and Francesca. Dugald is haunted by memories. As if waking from a dream, he realizes that, immersed in his love for ideals, the classics, and Francesca, he has left behind what now seems so real - the family he spurned fifty years ago. For her part, Francesca is convinced Dugald's spirit will be revived during the school's annual pilgrimage to the ancient ruins of Delphi. Under the hot Greek sun, however, the fabric of illusion will be burned away. The Truth Teller, Govier's sixth novel, became a national bestseller.</p>

The Truth Teller

Random House of Canada, Limite

Creation

In this atmospheric and enthralling novel, Katherine Govier tells the story of the world's greatest living bird artist as he finally understands the paradox embedded in his art: that the act of creation is also an act of destruction. Running two steps ahead of the bailiff, alternately praised and reviled, John James Audubon set himself the audacious task of drawing, from nature, every bird in North America. The result was his masterpiece, The Birds of America. In June 1833, partway through his mission, he enlisted his son, Captain Bayfield of the Royal Navy, and a party of young gentlemen to set sail for nesting grounds no ornithologist had ever seen, in the treacherous passage between Newfoundland and Labrador. Creation explores the short, stormy summer throughout which the captain became the artist's foil, measuring stick, and the recipient of his long-held secrets. It is an exploration of that fateful expedition, a probing and imaginative narrative that fills in a gap in the visionary naturalist's well-documented life.

Without a Guide: Contemporary Women's Travel Adventures

Walter & Ross Macfarlane

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