We Were the Bullfighters, Marianne K. Miller's novel about Ernest Hemingway in Canada during the 1920s, is on our August Summer Reading List, which means that it's also one of the terrific books we've got up for giveaway until the end of August.
Head over to our giveaways page for your chance to win, and to check out everything else on offer.
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Wait Softly Brother, by Kathryn Kuitenbrouwer
I always picture, when reading this book, that someone might have said to the author, “You want to write what? A novel that is one part break-up of a marriage which appears to be yours and another part the adventures of a long lost relative as a substitute in the American Civil War?” And Ms. Kuitenbrouwer said yes and proceeded to do it beautifully. As my beloved writing teacher used to say, “If you can do it, you may do it.” And in this case, do it very well with a wonderful philosophical underpinning about the nature of existence and loss.
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Undersong, by Kathleen Winter
I have been reading a history of the East India Company and learned that among those who worked as clerks for this notorious company was the literary Charles Lamb, friend of Samuel Taylor Coleridge and William Wordsworth. But these men are not the focus of Undersong. The novel is about Dorothy, William Wordsworth’s sister who, with a clerk-like exactitude and very observant eye of her own, kept detailed notes of her explorations of the English countryside in the company of her brother and Mr. Coleridge. Some believe these writings of Dorothy’s are the unacknowledged basis for many of her brother’s works.
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This Is How We Love, by Lisa Moore
I would read anything Lisa Moore wrote. She is also a visual artist and that talent spills over into her works of the written word. The art on the cover is by Moore, herself. The book opens with a terrible event. 21-year-old Xavier has been attacked and left for dead in the middle of a snowstorm. His parents, Jules and Joe, must travel home from a vacation in Mexico to be with him. As the novel goes back and forth through time we learn the stories of everyone around Xavier and his parents.
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Semi-Detached, by Elizabeth Ruth
Having written a historical fiction novel, it will be no surprise that this is a genre I like. I like it because the past always has something to say about the present. I’m also starting to notice I like books involving serious weather. In this wonderful novel we meet two lesbian couples. One couple is living openly in Toronto in 2013 and the other couple living a less open existence in Toronto in the 1940s.
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The Secret History of Audrey James, by Heather Marshall
Another book set in two time periods, in this case, 2010 and in the midst of WWII. The Audrey of the title is living in pre-war Germany and through her we see the rise of the Nazi Party and Adolf Hitler. Like Marshall’s debut novel, Looking for Jane, this novel also deals with the revelation of secrets which connect 2010 Kate living in the Scottish Borders and Audrey in wartime Berlin. Audrey is based on a real-life Canadian hero of the resistance.
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When The World Fell Silent, by Donna Jones Alward
Another story set during wartime, only this time it’s WWI. On the morning of December 6, 1917, two ships collide in Halifax harbour. One of them is carrying a lot of TNT and shortly after the collision it explodes decimating a large portion of the city, killing many and injuring many more. The novel takes us through these real events through the eyes of two women, one a nurse whose hospital is overwhelmed dealing with the casualties and injured, the other a mother who becomes separated from her daughter. As skillfully as the author has woven together fiction with the facts, you may find yourself wanting to read more about this unbelievable disaster.
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Hunting a Sea-Glass Heart, by Carolyn Charron
Who, I ask you, would not want to read a book about a menopausal pirate? The pirate in question is Anne Bonny, whose father has kept her imprisoned in the mid-18th century corseted society of Charles Towne Carolina after an adventurous youth. But when he dies and motivated by the search for a long-lost daughter, a dishonourable ex-husband and the theft of a sea-glass heart, a gift from her close friend, Mary, Anne goes back to sea and resumes her life as a pirate.
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Anne of Green Gables, by Lucy Maude Montgomery
You know when you have lunch with an old friend you haven’t seen in years and it is like no time has passed and you remember why you were such good friends. In honour of the 150th anniversary of the author’s birth, reread Anne of Green Gables. It will be a similar experience.
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Crosses in the Sky, by Mark Bourrie
I took a Canadian History course in university taught by a French Canadian. Needless to say, it was not the history I’d grown up with. Mark Bourrie tackles the mythology around the Jesuit missionary priest, Jean de Brebeuf. It is a different story than the one you thought you knew.
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Sisters in the Wilderness, by Charlotte Gray
It is good to read this book every now and then. It will remind you that relatively speaking you don’t have much to complain about. The incredible struggles of these two women brought to Canada by husbands who had no pioneering skills whatsoever are unbelievable.
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Learn more about We Were the Bullfighters:
In 1923, Ernest Hemingway, struggling with the responsibilities of marriage and unexpected fatherhood, has just made a big mistake. He decided that for the baby’s first year he would interrupt his fledgling writing career in Paris and move his family to North America. No longer a freelancer, he now has a gruelling job with a difficult boss, as a staff reporter for the Toronto Daily Star. On his first day, already feeling hemmed in by circumstances, he’s sent to cover a prison break at Kingston Pen.
The escaped convicts, led by notorious bank robber Norman “Red” Ryan, are on the run, making their way from the bush north of Kingston, to the streets of Toronto, and then through towns and cities across the United States. Their crimes become more brazen, their lifestyle increasingly glamorous. Growing more and more preoccupied with Ryan and his willingness to risk everything to be free, Hemingway ponders duty, freedom, and what stops a man from pursuing his dreams.