AFTERWORD Atlantic Books Today
Staff picks FICTION
TWO FOR THE TABLELANDS
MELT
Kevin Major Breakwater Books
Two women, from teenage years to late thirties, priorities ever-changing, friendship sustaining them. Wicks’ sharp language— skilled punning meets stark imagery—sheds new light on a classic theme drawn large on a St. John’s landscape.
During slow season, Newfoundland tour guide Sebastian Synard (One for the Rock) visits Gros Morne with his son. Their trip is flipped when they discover a half-buried body. Murdered. Sebastian’s curiosity sends him deeper into a twisting mystery, and eventually grave danger. This one’s a crowd-pleasing page turner.
Heidi Wicks Breakwater Books
BLAZE ISLAND
SWEETNESS IN THE LIME
Catherine Bush Goose Lane Editions
Stephen Kimber Vagrant Press
Climate change gothic from critically acclaimed author Catherine Bush. As you’d expect, the novel poses morally complex questions. It does so with the tautness of a thriller and the luxuriant precision of poetry.
Stephen Kimber weaves a frank story of romance not only between cultures, but across the First WorldThird World divide, with all the inherent economic tensions and frustrations. Sweetness is a tense, honest and moving tale of latter-life love in the time of postcolonial globalization.
GOOD MOTHERS DON’T
Laura Best Vagrant Press
In this gripping novel, Best brilliantly, and with great empathy, conveys the intense sorrow and pain of Elizabeth, a woman suffering mental illness in the 60s and 70s, and the loss it causes her. Best also dives into the societal why of matters, realistically portraying a community incapable of keeping ties with someone like Elizabeth.
CARDINAL DIVIDE
Nina Newington Guernica Editions
Meg, a sober alcoholic working in rehab with Indigenous clients, was adopted at age 10 and lacks memory of what came before. Then her father tells her he was born a woman. Nova Scotia writer Nina Newington brings us a taut and utterly believable tale of people who
are never what they seem to be, always as complicated as identity itself. BUTTER HONEY PIG BREAD
Francesca Ekwuyasi Arsenal Pulp Press
Nigerian-Canadian writer Francesca Ekwuyasi, who lives in Halifax, delivers a vivid, moving saga of twin sisters divided, and their mother Kambirinachi, who sees herself as a spirit, haunting families with dead children, miscarriages and stillbirths.
HISTORY
BLACK LOYALISTS IN NEW BRUNSWICK
Stephen Davidson Formac Publishing
Davidson’s biographies of eight African American Loyalists—transported to New Brunswick by the British after their defeat by the Americans, brings life to an important history, and the very human toll of white supremacy when slavery was still legal in what became New Brunswick. JOHN LENNON, YOKO ONO AND THE YEAR CANADA WAS COOL
Greg Marquis James Lorimer & Company
Historian Greg Marquis offers a unique portrayal of Canadian society in the late Sixties, recounting how politicians, activists, police, artists, musicians and businesses across NUMBER 92 | FALL 2020
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