Winter's freeze a hot topic for new book

Jason Lee Norman has the groundhog beat, at least for this year. It was more than good luck that the metropolitan region officially entered the winter season on the same weekend that he released his new book, a compilation of stories about winter.

It was like he predicted the weather and used it to full effect as a marketing ploy.

“Right before the snow fell! It seems almost too perfect,” he remarked on the timing. “Everyone can blame me.”

The Fort Saskatchewan raised writer was the driving force behind the newly released compilation of short stories called 40 Below: Edmonton’s Winter Anthology. He edited the book and even contributed one story to the effort. The creative writing exercise was meant to celebrate the season and galvanize a community of people who all share the highs (of snowdrifts) and lows (of temperatures during cold snaps).

“I wanted something that brought the Edmonton area together. I thought the idea of winter is something that we can all relate to, it’s something that unifies us in a sense. It’s something unique and tells a part of who we are: how we deal with it and the trials we go through every year. It’s what we all have in common.”

Besides, he continued, it’s easier for us to share in both our misery and nostalgic love of all things winter than for us to do so for all things summer.

“I think the summer isn’t nearly as interesting. There are definitely aspects of summer in Alberta with the weather changes that could bring on certain ideas.”

40 Below was meant to offer an avenue for the region’s literati to offer their anecdotes and other creative accounts of the winter season. It wasn’t intended for them to just make bitter statements about the uncompromising cold and the voluminous snowdrifts and the slippery, wind-rowed streets and the backbreaking snow removal and the frosty eyeglasses and the precipitous icicles dangling off of roofs and the 12 layers of clothing and the black ice car accidents and the… oh, well you get the point. They could have contributed warm remembrances of skating in the park and ice castles and snow fights and wet mittens and icicle-laden scarves.

The book is a blend of both. It contains approximately 70 pieces of fiction, non-fiction and poetry from more than 50 writers including Thomas Trofimuk, Alice Major, Anna Mioduchowska, Shirley Serviss, Michael Hingston, Diana Davidson and Matt Prins.

Jessica Kluthe contributed a bittersweet Christmas Eve story called Cepheus. It simply tells about an old woman who deals with the season in the best way she can.

“It’s about rhythm, ritual, and connection to and through the cold,” she stated.

St. Albert writer Carla Maj wrote What the Earth Holds to relate some true family history to how winter can remind us all of our mortality in the most poignant ways. Her husband’s grandfather died in the bitter Prairie cold in Saskatoon years ago.

“He’d had a heart attack and he wandered outside, and he was found very frozen underneath the tree in his yard. That image was what inspired me to write this. He was frozen but it was the heart attack that led him outside, of all the places to go, when it’s freezing cold. When you’re from Saskatchewan, you know that these things happen. You grow up hearing about these stories.”

The book is far from a sombre and sober telling of how the cold is depressing. Norman’s tale, Salamander, explores the mythology of these slithery beasts from the muddy depths as a metaphor for all of the people who live in cold northern climes. The language is fun and playful; the point, smart and warm.

“I wanted to write something totally different. It was about how we’re basically in charge of our own story that we tell to the rest of the world. We’re in charge of our message. In some ways, it could be our mythology.”

He said that he hopes the book offers something for everybody. In an attempt to continue his prescience, he offered his prognostication for the winter of 2013 to 2014.

“I have an optimism about it this year. It just seems like last year there was so much snow. It can’t possibly be like that again two years in a row.”