U of A alumni share their new books, including a food-lover's guide to the Okanagan, personal essays on reconciliation and one author's journey rereading the books of her childhood.
Compiled by Stephanie Bailey, '10 BA(Hons)
Food Artisans of the Okanagan: Your Guide to the Best Locally Crafted Fare
Food and Travel
by Jennifer Cockrall-King, '94 BA(Hons), TouchWood Editions, touchwoodeditions.com
Discover the edible delights of the Okanagan with profiles of more than 125 farm-to-table chefs, bakers, beekeepers, cheese makers, fishmongers, craft brewers and everything in between. The region is absolutely bursting with delicious creations, and this self-guided tour - complete with maps and contact information - is the best way to find them.
Paper Teeth
Short Fiction
by Lauralyn Chow, '80 BA, '83 LLB, NeWest Press, newestpress.com
Paper Teeth follows the lives of the Lees, a Chinese-Canadian family, across time and place, from Edmonton in the 1960s and '70s to present-day Calgary. Through these interconnected stories, Chow crafts funny and heart-warming journeys about the pursuit of identity and the crafting of home.
Grief Matters: A Collection of Poems
Poetry
By Marjorie Zelent, '59 Dip(Nu), self-published; email author to order: mzelent@shaw.ca
A collection of poems that maps out the different ways we grieve as we go through life. From the loss of a pet to the loss of a job, your health or a loved one, Zelent ponders each unique experience. The poems explore grief as a process, a unique journey that we will all inevitably face.
Deadly Ties
Fiction
by Maggie Thom (Glenna Mageau), '86 BPE, self-published, eBook, maggiethom.com
While uncovering a deadly secret buried beneath the golf course, Kyara unknowingly stirs up a long-forgotten past that some will go to any lengths to keep hidden. Pulled from her quiet, content life, Kyara finds herself on a mission, not only to find out who put her mother in a coma, but also to stay a step ahead of those trying to kill her.
Of Men and Beyond
Fiction
by Yevgeny Zagayevsky, '12 MSc, '15 PhD, self-published, yevgenyzagayevsky.com
Civil engineer Mike travels from Canada to Thailand to rescue his girlfriend Nickie, who vanishes in the jungle while on a business trip. The rescue mission is not as simple as it first appears, as Nickie's disappearance is linked to a series of mysterious events. While Mike fights to free his girlfriend, he is forced to confront his past.
Shortcut to Orthopaedics
Textbook
by Robert Perlau, '82 BMedSc, '84 MD, Brush Education, brusheducation.ca
What are the most common orthopedic (musculoskeletal) conditions seen by primary care physicians? What do they need to learn about the field? Shortcut to Orthopaedics answers these questions for medical students and non-orthopedic physicians by organizing the broad field into manageable units. Photos and X-ray images highlight key principles throughout this practical text.
Creative Non-fiction
In This Together: Fifteen Stories of Truth & Reconciliation
Danielle Metcalfe-Chenail (editor); Carissa Halton, '03 BA, Rhonda Kronyk, '04 BA(Hons), '07 MA; Erika Luckert, '14 BA (Hons), '14 Cert(CSL), Carol Shaben, '85 BA (contributors), Brindle & Glass Publishing Ltd. brindleandglass.com
What is real reconciliation? This collection of personal essays from both Indigenous and non-Indigenous contributors from across Canada welcomes readers into a timely, healing conversation. Contributors look deeply and honestly at their own experiences and assumptions about race and racial divides in Canada in hopes that the rest of the country will do the same.
Personal Finance
The Modern Couple's Money Guide
by Lesley-Anne Scorgie, '05 BCom, Dundurn Press, dundurn.com
Money matters are the number 1 cause of separation and divorce in North America. You can avoid heartache by learning how to merge, manage and build your finances together. Bestselling author Scorgie helps couples build a powerful financial, personal and professional foundation by outlining seven steps to building wealth together, including getting on the same page, curbing overspending, getting out of debt and designing your master money plan.
Education Theory/Literacy
One Child Reading: My Auto-Bibliography
by Margaret Mackey, '91 MLIS, '95 PhD, University of Alberta Press, www.uap.ualberta.ca
Seeking a deeper sense of what happens when we read, Mackey revisited the texts she read, viewed, listened to and wrote as she became literate in the 1950s and 1960s in St. John's, N.L. In One Child Reading, Mackey weaves together memory, textual criticism, social analysis and reading theory to contribute to our understanding of reading and literacy development.
Fiction
Watermark: The Truth Beneath the Surface
by Sari Sikstrom, '85 BA, '89 BA(SpecCert), self-published, createspace.com
Forensic librarian Dr. Vela Ostofvold, a Sherlock Holmes of the book world, studies the inscriptions and notations left by readers in rare books. Vela's mother is a prominent opera star while her father's identity is unknown. Amelia, Vela's best friend, challenges her belief that she is responsible for her father's absence and helps Vela solve the mystery of her paternity.
Fiction
Seep
by W. Mark Giles, '84 BA(Hons), Anvil Press, anvilpress.com
Dwight Eliot returns to his hometown of Seep to find the baseball field from his childhood being redeveloped as a master-planned recreation complex. In the face of the town's transformation, he tries to preserve its stories and in so doing he comes to question his own. Seep explores the tension between land development and landscape, trauma and nostalgia, and dysfunction and intimacy in a narrative of 21st-century Canada.
Literary Criticism
Counterblasting Canada: Marshall McLuhan, Wyndham Lewis, Wilfred Watson, and Sheila Watson
Gregory Betts; Paul Hjartarson, '70 BA(Hons), '76 MA; Kristine Smitka, '07 MA, '14 PhD (editors), University of Alberta Press, www.uap.ualberta.ca
In 1914, Wyndham Lewis and Ezra Pound started the avant-garde movement Vorticism, which aimed to analyze the present: its technologies, communication, politics and architecture. The essays in this collection trace the influence of Vorticism on Marshall McLuhan and Canadian modernism, and examine postwar Canadian literary culture, including the legacies of Sheila and Wilfred Watson.