Johanna Skibsrud’s debut novel connects the flooding of an Ontario town, the Vietnam War, a trailer in North Dakota and an unfinished boat in Maine. Parsing family history, worn childhood memories, and the palimpsest of old misunderstandings, Skibsrud’s narrator maps her father’s past. Napoleon Haskell lives with Henry in the town of Casablanca, Ontario, on the shores of a man-made lake beneath which lie the remains of the former town. Henry is the father of Napoleon’s friend Owen, who died fighting in Vietnam. When her life comes apart, Napoleon’s daughter retreats to Casablanca and is soon immersed in the complicated family stories that lurk below the surface of everyday life. With its quiet mullings and lines from Bogart, The Sentimentalists captures a daughter’s wrestling with a heady family mythology. “The real beginning of this story,” says Skibsrud, “was a summer that I spent working on Flagstaff lake, a lake that covers four now submerged townships in northern Maine, and served as the inspiration for the lake and the buried town in my book. That fall, with the beginnings of a story in my head, my father began to speak for the first time about his experiences in the Vietnam War. I am still not sure exactly why he told me his story when he did, but I think it had to doit was 2003 thenwith the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, which had been for some time stirring in him a deep anger toward a government willing to repeat the mistakes of the past at the expense of innocent people; soldiers as well as civilians. My mother thinks that my father told me his stories because he knew that I would do something with themwhat I did write, though, was not my father’s story, but my own. And it is not a true story. At its root, though, there are two true things. One is my father’s testimony following Operation Liberty II in 1967, in which he spoke out against the murder of a civilian woman by the Captain of his squad. The other is the feeling I got floating over the buried towns of Flagstaff Lake: a feeling of the way that everything exists in layers, that nothing disappears; it just gets hidden sometimes.”Winner of the 2010 Scotia Bank Giller Prize.

The Sentimentalists

Literature & Fiction

Skibsrud, Johanna

Literary

Gaspereau Press

Fishwork, dear

Smith, Alison

Poetry

Obelisk

Gillis, Susan

Waking Ground

Shalan Joudry

Lost River: The Waters of Remembrance, A Memoir

Biographies & Memoirs

Harry Thurston

Professionals & Academics

Seven-to-Five

Michael Meagher

For many years, retired missionary Charley Harvey has been writing columns for the Atlantic Baptist magazine. In these columns, Harvey mines both his childhood on a rural New Brunswick farm and his years working among the rural peoples of Angola and Zaire (now Congo) for stories that encapsulate the essential truths of community and faith. A natural storyteller, Harvey's reflections are as practical and down to earth as his subject matter.

As the twig is bent

Elliott, C. Russell

<p><p>There is only one tree left in the world. A wise old man named Zadok and a band of followers set out to find it, against great odds. Can its 'magic' save them? Or will an evil deceiver find and steal the tree for the price its seeds will bring? The Quest for the Magic Appletree is a work of magic realism that investigates many of our age's important social and environmental concerns. Written as a chapter book with pre-teens in mind, The Quest is ideal for use in the classroom, as a bedtime ritual, or for self-directed reading.</p></p>

The Quest for the Magic Apple Tree

MacInnis, Ron

Teen & Young Adult

For many years, retired missionary Charley Harvey has been writing columns for the Atlantic Baptist magazine. In these columns, Harvey mines both his childhood on a rural New Brunswick farm and his years working among the rural peoples of Angola and Zaire (now Congo) for stories that encapsulate the essential truths of community and faith.  A natural storyteller, Harvey's reflections are as practical and down to earth as his subject matter.

History

Russell Elliott

Americas

Execution Poems: The Black Acadian Tragedy of "George and Rue"

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