Authors to deliver dual launch at library

If hanging out at the library after hours sounds like a fun thing to do, the St. Albert Public Library is about to up the ante by giving you two unique authors to hang out with for a one-night-only special event.

Diana Davidson and Michael Hingston have each just published their first novels. They are very different from each other but they have each captured a lot of attention from critical reviews. They will treat local audiences to a sit-down launch and reception next Saturday.

Davidson's Pilgrimage is set in 1891 with major locations in both Lac Ste. Anne and St. Albert. Davidson said the journey of her book started when she read a news story about a woman's body found at the bottom of a well. It sparked her imagination enough that she set out to come up with an alternate history in order to understand what happened to that person and recreate the setting of her life.

This fit in well with her already being drawn to macabre times and places.

"I've always been really interested in some of the darker periods of history. Medieval England is fascinating to me, the plague … that kind of stuff. Growing up in Alberta, I didn't know much about the fur trade, settlement, and all that sort of thing. Until I started really researching this novel."

Pilgrimage is partly set in St. Albert back in the early decades of the mission. A young Métis woman named Mahkesîs Cardinal finds herself at a kind of crossroads in her life. She has become pregnant against her will by a married Englishman for whom she was working. The story follows her across the course of a year as she struggles to face this challenge and others as they come her way.

Davidson said she worked hard to make the story as authentic and realistic as possible. That being the case, Mahkesîs did not have an easy go of things, not even close. It's that kind of set-up that makes the book resonate with readers.

"I think it must have been really, really difficult to find out where you belonged and who you were. There was still, of course, very rampant sexism and racism that would affect your daily life," she said.

Light and contemporary

Hingston's story, on the other hand, is much more contemporary and a lot lighter. The Dilettantes focuses on The Peak, the student newspaper at Simon Fraser University, and how two of its editors, Tracy and Alex, try to keep it going while a rival rag comes onto the scene. It's filled with humour and absurdism but still rings true.

Hingston said he's always wanted to write a campus novel. He was thrilled to finally get his chance in between working as the books columnist for the Edmonton Journal and other writing projects.

"It's a really noble tradition which I really love. A lot of them tend to be slapstick comedies of manners between the professors behind the scenes gallivanting and these bumbling students trying to figure it out," he explained. "It's a really appealing mix of people taking a very silly situation very seriously."

While there have been many other examples of campus novels, he was unaware of any of the others focusing on young journalists.

"It's an angle that hasn't really been done before and so it was really exciting to be able to take the meagre things that I've learned as a journalist and serve up the media industry in an oblique way as much as the general kind of silliness of academic life."