My five Canadian historical novels.





Above are my five most recent novels, all of them inspired by or based on Canadian women. The earliest.  The young adult novels, The Songcatcher and Me, and Grace and the Secret Vault, are inspired by folk song collector Edith Fowke and Grace Woodsworth, respectively.  Next to be published is Grace in Love, followed by Votes, Love and War and its stand alone sequel, A Girl Should Be.  All are available from info@baico.ca or from me, as well as being on Amazon.

Information about my earlier books can be found by searching under my name.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

"This Visible Worm", the "William/Willie challenge":

THIS VISIBLE WORM   My “William/Willie challenge”  Some years ago I watched the movie, “Dangerous Minds,” centring on a dedicated high school teacher played by Michelle Pfeiffer. She initiated a “Dylan/Dylan challenge for her students. They were to find poems/lyrics by the Welsh poet Dylan Thomas and the American singer/songwriter Bob Dylan which had the same theme.  It turned out that each poet had written a work urging a bold, confrontational attitude to death. Bob Dylan wrote:  “...I will not carry myself down to die./When I go to my grave, my head will be high.”  Dylan Thomas wrote, “Do not go gentle into that good night/Rage, rage against the dying of the light.”   The idea of finding a connection between two poets from different eras and intrigued me, so I invented a similar challenge for myself, the “William/Willie” challenge. “William” is the English poet William Blake (1757-1827), whose books, Songs of Innocence and Songs of Experien...
Read more

Ed Broadbent's Gift to Us

 Ed Broadbent’s Legacy to Us I met Ed Broadbent once,  in 2003, at an all-candidates’ debate in my Ottawa  community. At Jack Layton’s urging, he had come out of retirement to run in Ottawa Centre. His performance was outstanding. Afterwards, I and other audience members went up to the front to congratulate him. Another party’s candidate, who had a TV presence, was younger and perhaps better looking than Ed, assumed that I and the others were coming to greet him, and looked crestfallen on realizing we weren’t. Meanwhile Ed looked surprised and pleased to have so many fans come up to shake his hand. On January 28th, 2024, watching his state funeral, I was moved by the inspirational eulogies about his strivings to bring about a social democratic Canada, I was pleased to hear the co-authors of his recent memoir, Seeking Social Democracy, pay tribute to him.   “Broadbent wanted to write something concerned with political ideas in the broadest sense” wrote on...
Read more
The other day, someone asked me to name some of my favourite historical novels - other than the six I have written.  I reeled off some of the books listed below, then came home and thought of several more.   All  have educated me about significant events  of the past and narrative techniques.  These are my current favourites. Isabel Allende's  novel, A Long Petal of the Sea, has compelling characters who survive the Spanish Civil War and come to Chile, where they experience the 1973 right wing coup. Amy Bloom's, White Houses , set during the Franklin D. Roosevelt administration, shows First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt and journalist Lorena Hickock trying to sustain a relationship during this time of economic depression and world war. Barbara Kingsolver's, The Lacuna , centres on an American author who crosses paths with Diego Rivera, Frida Kahlo and Leon Trotsky in Mexico in the 1930s, and then pays for it during the Red Scare. Kingsolver's award-winning D...
Read more