In the summer of 1963, the year of the sensational release of the movie Cleopatra, the women of Kalyna Beach prepare for their annual end-of-season party. With their husbands away in the city all week, the women’s days are ruled by the predictable rhythms of children and chores, lightened by the “racy” books they trade amongst themselves and by their Friday afternoon gatherings for gin and gossip. But this is the summer when everything will change for the girls and women of Kalyna Beach, as innocence is exchanged for a new understanding of the possibilities open to them all. From the award-winning author of Honey and Ashes and Thieves, The Ladies’ Lending Library is a richly evocative story for anyone who has longed for the heady days of bygone summers and the risky promises of change.

The Ladies' Lending Library

Literature & Fiction

Keefer, Janice Kulyk

Literary

Harper-perennial

From one of Canada’s most accomplished novelists, a bittersweet tale about mothers, daughters, friends and lovers in 1960s cottage country.
 In the summer of 1963, the year of the release of Cleopatra, the most sensational movie ever made, the women of Kalyna Beach prepare for their annual end-of season party. Sonia Martyn and her four daughters are part of a group of first generation Ukrainian Canadians, newly minted middle-class families claiming their small part of the cottage-country dream. With their husbands away in the city all week, the women’s days are ruled by the predictable rhythms of children and chores, lightened by the “racy” books they trade amongst themselves and by their Friday afternoon gatherings for gin and gossip, heightened by their obsession with the deliciously scandalous love affair between Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton. 
Their tightly bound world is straining with its own dramas and secrets. Sonia, a former fashion model, mourns the death of her mother and fights with her difficult eldest daughter. Elusive Nadia, the wife of a millionaire, longs for a life she cannot have. Sharp-tongued, sophisticated Sasha plays a dangerous game in both challenging and shoring-up the traditional Ukrainian community and its defining values. And for adolescent Laura, her sisters and their friends, the rifts and fissures that appear in the once impregnable “world of the mothers” will unleash a startling series of betrayals and discoveries. For this is the summer when everything will change for the girls and women of Kalyna Beach, as innocence is exchanged for a new understanding of the possibilities open to them all. 
In setting her characters against the backdrop of the turbulent sixties, Janice Kulyk Keefer creates a radiant portrait of women caught between countries, cultures and aspirations. Richly evocative, beautifully told, The Ladies’Lending Library will resonate with more than women and book club members; it’s a story for anyone who has longed for the sweet and heady days of bygone summers and the risky promises of change.

Ladies Lending Library

HarperCollins, Publishers

From the acclaimed author of The Green Library, a haunting memoir of family and home, both lost and found, of longing and belonging.Janice Kulyk Keefer was born in Canada, a country that for her immigrant family meant a land as free as the future itself. But she was also born into the history of her family's homeland, receiving both the gift and the burden of a past that often seems "an equal spill of beauty and blood." Now she has set out to build a bridge of words between contemporary Canada and the ancient village of Staromischyna, once part of Poland, now in Ukraine.Honey and Ashes is novel-like in its sweep of personal and public history, and its ability to draw us into the complex mysteries of family. It moves from an extraordinary wealth of stories about life in Staromischyna and Depression-era Toronto, to an absorbing account of how the complex, troubled histories of Poland and Ukraine shadowed these stories, and it ends with a difficult journey back to the actual place where the stories began. It is a breathtaking book that will touch all those who feel compelled to search the landscape of memory for a glimpse of their true selves."I stand over a river, looking over the water to a distant shore. When I was a child, I crossed this river as though water were as natural an element to me as the air I breathed, the earth under my feet. But now I know the strength of the river's current. Were I to step into these waters, they would tug me upstream or down, anywhere but across; anywhere but where I long to be." - from Honey and AshesHarperFlamingoCanada"Kulyk Keefer's new work delights and disturbs ... she weaves a tale of love and betrayal as intricate as the embroidery on a Slavic shawl." - Maclean's

Honey and Ashes: A Story of Family

Biographies & Memoirs

Community & Culture

Harpercollins Canada

IN THIS EVOCATIVE NOVEL, Janice Kulyk Keefer beautifully imagines Katherine Mansfield’s brief but brilliant life through the desires and the passions of her readers. In 1986, shortly before the centenary of Mansfield’s birth, Monty, a disillusioned New Zealand scholar, impulsively steals a letter intended for his writer-father. Intrigued by the letter’s offer of new Mansfield material, Monty is inspired to try to redeem his failed career. Arcing gracefully from New Zealand to Europe to Chicago and finally to Windsor, Ontario, Thieves is at once a brilliant mystery, an absorbing love story and a haunting study of what makes us whole.

Thieves

Traveling Ladies

Harpercollins Publisher

As one reviewer remarked, "Every once in a while, an author effects a haunting... In her new novel ... Janice Kulyk Keefer has managed such magic." 
The journey of a woman who is forced to abandon the restrictive safety of her life and travel back into a secret, disturbing, yet richly human family history, The Green Library is an unforgettable story about the profound need to remember and to belong - to the present and the past, to the familiar and the strange.

Green Library Tpb

From the acclaimed author of The Green Library, a haunting memoir of family and home, both lost and found, of longing and belonging.Janice Kulyk Keefer was born in Canada, a country that for her immigrant family meant a land as free as the future itself. But she was also born into the history of her family's homeland, receiving both the gift and the burden of a past that often seems "an equal spill of beauty and blood." Now she has set out to build a bridge of words between contemporary Canada and the ancient village of Staromischyna, once part of Poland, now in Ukraine.
Honey and Ashes is novel-like in its sweep of personal and public history, and its ability to draw us into the complex mysteries of family. It moves from an extraordinary wealth of stories about life in Staromischyna and Depression-era Toronto, to an absorbing account of how the complex, troubled histories of Poland and Ukraine shadowed these stories, and it ends with a difficult journey back to the actual place where the stories began. It is a breathtaking book that will touch all those who feel compelled to search the landscape of memory for a glimpse of their true selves.
"I stand over a river, looking over the water to a distant shore. When I was a child, I crossed this river as though water were as natural an element to me as the air I breathed, the earth under my feet. But now I know the strength of the river's current. Were I to step into these waters, they would tug me upstream or down, anywhere but across; anywhere but where I long to be." - from Honey and Ashes
HarperFlamingoCanada
"Kulyk Keefer's new work delights and disturbs ... she weaves a tale of love and betrayal as intricate as the embroidery on a Slavic shawl." - Maclean's

Honey And Ashes

Memoirs

It is August of 1963, the year of the Taylor/Burton film epic Cleopatra, showcasing a passion too grand to be contained on the movie screen. The women of the Kalyna Beach cottage community gather for gin and gossip, trading the current racy bestsellers among themselves as they seek a brief escape from the predictable rhythms of children and chores. But dramatic change is coming this summer as innocence falters and the desire for change reaches a boiling point, threatening to disrupt the warm, sweet, heady days and the lives of parents and children, family and friends, forever.

The Ladies' Lending Library: A Novel

This book examines the nature and scope of the work of Mavis Gallant, the noted Canadian short story writer and novelist, who delights readers with the elegance and authority of her prose while disconcerting them with the sharp edge of her vision. Examining her fiction, journalism, and work in the theatre, Keefer explores her preoccupation with "the prison of childhood," and the constricted world of women, as well as her continual concern with the function of memory. Keefer also focuses closely on both the rewards and the problems that readers encounter in any sustained engagement with Gallant's work, raising important questions about the nature of contemporary fiction and Gallant's unique Canadian perspective.

Reading Mavis Gallant (Studies in Canadian Literature)

History & Criticism

Oxford University Press

A collection of short stories about travel, including "Prodigals," "The Grand Platieres," "Accidents," "Going Over the Bars," and "Isola Bella"

Traveling Ladies: Stories

United States

William Morrow & Co.

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Books by Keefer, Janice Kulyk