Reading offers a safe form of adventure and escapism that relieves stress, feeds curiosity and grows vocabulary.
But it tends to be a solitary experience, and every once in a while, we like to surround ourselves in a bubble with like-minded people. When we read stories about characters who live different lives from our own, it’s exciting to compare thoughts and broaden our horizons.
St. Albert Readers Festival (STARFest) offers us more than a glimpse into different worlds. It introduces readers to the imaginative creators of those worlds who help expand our view of humanity.
Still early in their careers, the following three writers are producing thought-provoking reads.
A Sweet Sting of Salt
By Rose Sutherland
Toronto-based author Rose Sutherland’s historical fiction, A Sweet Sting of Salt, takes readers to 19th century Nova Scotia. It is the setting for her reimagining of the Celtic folktale known as The Selkie Wife. It tells the tale of a fisherman who falls in love with a selkie woman.
The water-bound selkies can remove their sealskins and live on land. The fisherman is so taken with a selkie woman’s beauty, he hides her sealskin so she cannot return to the sea and forces her to live with him. In the folk tale, her child usually finds her sealskin and gives it to her so she can return to the sea.
In the original folk tale, it reads like a romance and there is sympathy for the husband who loses his selkie wife.
“To me it reads like a horror. I had stumbled upon someone on the Internet talking about the selkie legend and comparing it to human trafficking victims. And my brain went off in a different direction,” said Sutherland.
In A Sweet Sting of Salt we meet Jean, the local midwife, who lives in the town of Barquer’s Bay. As a Victorian lesbian, she lives an isolated, simple life devoid of companionship.
“Jean is a lonely, prickly midwife who had a scandal in her past and was forced to leave a relationship. She throws herself into her work and one night she hears a cry by her seaside cottage.”
She discovers a woman about to go into labour. Jean helps Muirin deliver her child and shelters her.
“Jean realizes something is wrong in Muirin’s relationship and suspects domestic abuse. Jean makes a logical assumption and gets deeply invested in helping her.”
Sutherland will discuss the novel with host creative non-fiction writer Diana Davidson on Thursday, Oct. 24 at St. Albert Public Library’s Forsyth Hall.
Daughter
By Claudia Dey
In Daughter, Dey explores the dysfunctional relationship between Mona, a playwright, and her father Paul, a charismatic man famous for writing one great novel.
Paul’s larger-than-life persona plays both an intoxicating and toxic role in Mona’s life. First, he engages her as a confidante and then tosses her under the bus to fix a broken relationship with his hostile second wife.
“In writing Paul I drew on famous men particular to Paul – Sam Shepherd, Leonard Cohen, Philip Roth and of course Ernest Hemingway – the literary greats,” said Dey.
“It’s kind of universal how blinded we daughters are in following our fathers, especially when they are absent. They occupy so much of our psyche. I wanted to look at the influence fathers have over daughters and how they blindly seek validation.”
Yet despite Paul’s indifference, Mona continues to need her father because she deeply desires his love and through his fame, he holds the keys to the publishing empire. At the moment, she’s on the outskirts of both worlds.
Dey goes on to describe Paul and Mona’s relationship as much closer to a bad romance of imperfect human beings than that of a father and daughter.
The author wrote Daughters during the COVID pandemic, a time where societal pressures produced a claustrophobic vibe fueling some of the hottest and coldest emotions in the book.
“I didn’t set out to deliver a message, but as I drafted something and gained altitude, the book’s redemptive power through art came through. When we make art, we make ourselves.”
Dey appears at STARFest on Saturday, Oct. 26 in conversation with crime reporter, feature writer and podcaster Jana Pruden.
Prairie Edge
By Conor Kerr
Conor Kerr has crafted a novel underscoring the important relationship between bison and Indigenous peoples. In Prairie Edge, two Métis cousins, Ezzy Desjarlais and Grey Ginther devise a plan to secretly relocate a bison herd from a national park to a major downtown Edmonton avenue.
Grey, once a passionate activist, is tired of corporate crusading that goes nowhere. She dreams of returning to a world 150 years in the past. Ezzy, who has gone through years of foster care and group homes, is more laid back about disrupting traffic.
After the first group of bison is moved without issues, Grey is determined to relocate another group and establish a new herd. The second time, disaster strikes. A bull crushes Ezzy’s leg and the aftermath for both changes their lives forever.
Ezzy begins his journey as a passive participant. However, by the end, Kerr establishes him as the tragic hero. As Grey states, “Every successful revolution needs soldiers just as much as it needs dreamers and poets.”
Kerr is joined in conversation with writer Jordan Abel on Monday, Oct. 28.
Tickets for these three presentations are $7 per session. Tickets are available at www.starfest.ca.