Ruth Anne Latta

    In 2015 my  novel, Grace in Love , was published. (See Baico Publishing, info@baico.ca  The central character, Grace, was a real person, who made several false career starts before finding her life's work in politics, where she focused on issues of special importance to women.  She was the daughter of J.S. Woodsworth, the key founder of the Cooperative Commonwealth Federation, (CCF), the forerunner of the New Democratic Party (NDP), and married to Angus MacInnis, a long-serving Member of Parliament from British Columbia.         Grace in Love  ias a romantic novel about a young woman searching for love and a life's work, and finding both after some trial and error. Items in the Simon Fraser University Archives and the University of British Columbia Archives were helpful to my research, and the poem, by Grace, which follows, is in the latter archive, under Grace MacInnis Papers, photo collection, 1911/6) At least, that's what it says at the bottom of the ancient copy I h

 This excerpt from A Striking Woman has been published as a short story in the anthology, Where the Winds Blow , Polar Expressions, 2022. "Saints"  from A Striking Woman a novel by Ruth Latta      When Jacqueline was eight, her teacher, Sister St. James, assigned each child to prepare a class presentation on a favourite saint. Jacqueline’s first choice was Jeanne d’Arc, who had been canonized in 1920, just seven years earlier. Jeanne, a farm girl in the 1400s, heard voices from heaven telling her to help the crown prince, the dauphin, kick the English occupying army out of France. When she arrived on her farm horse to see the prince, his nobles scoffed at the idea that a young country girl could lead troops into battle. The dauphin, though, was impressed with her and let her lead an army to free the city of Orleans. Jeanne won several victories, so that the dauphin could get to Reims to be anointed king. Then she was captured by traitors who handed her over to the English. Sh

 When I told a writer friend that I'd emailed the text of my new novel to the publisher, she remarked, "How exciting. I never tire of the thrill of seeing the final draft go off to be published." For me, the thrill always has a large component of anxiety.  The novel is no longer a personal activity, a relationship with the characters, but is  on its way to a wider audience. I feel like a mother sending a child off to school for the first time, aware that I can't protect my fledgling from everything and hopeful  that he or she does well in the outside world. I am encouraged that two excerpts from A Striking Woman have appeared in print in slightly different form. “His Point of View” appears in Nectar and “Saints” appears in Where the Winds Blow , anthologies published in 2022 by Polar Expressions, Maple Ridge B.C. 

  Lessons , by Ian McEwan reviewed by Ruth Latta                                         Warning: This review contains spoilers.      One of the advantages of growing older is an ability to comprehend literature that seemed puzzling or irrelevant in younger days.  I read Mrs. Dalloway when in my twenties, but it was not until years later, after reaching the age of the central character in Woolf’s novel, that I could relate to her emotions and concerns.      Some reviewers of Ian Mc Ewan’s new novel, Lessons , (London, Jonathan Cape, 2022) suggest that the central character, Roland Baines, is a whining, privileged loser who never really got his act together, and claim that the novel lacks action and includes too much history. (The time frame extends from World War II  to the present day.) Other reviewers criticized Lessons for being too realistic - not sufficiently innovative or experimental.      Readers familiar with the great realistic novels of the 19th and 20th century, in which