A surprising tale of two brothers, and strange and familiar stories of the Cowichan Valley.

“Stenson's observations of the ordinariness of people are keen and revelatory.”–Prairie Fire

These stories shimmer in summer heat under the gaze of a two-humped mountain and belong to the Cowichan Valley. Children born to ex-cons, lawyers, longshoremen, wood carvers, investors and gamblers write their own new-generation stories, at times melodic, often discordant, always determined to carry a tune.

Half Brothers is a masterly and unsentimental novella about the lives of two brothers left unchanneled by parental review. One brother is tough and likes to fight, the other does not. ​One is the father’s favourite and the other hides when he can. But in an extraordinary reversal of roles, and as the years pass, readers ultimately learn which one has the true grit. In the four short stories; Ball and Chain,, Bon,,Dick and Jane and Super Reader, Stenson uses wry wit and edgy juxtapositions to capture the voices of the young and old of small-town Duncan. This is Canadian Literature at its best—calling forth a country that already exists. Flying beneath the radar, Stenson is one of our best fictionists.

Bill Stenson is a fiction writer born in Nelson, BC. He didn't live there long. He has had stories published in many of Canada's fine line of literary magazines and has a short story collection titled Translating Women and a novel titled Svoboda, both with Thistledown Press. Fiction is his main interest, but he reads a fair amount of poetry and he loves memoirs. He was head cook and bottle washer at CanadianMemoirs.com for years where he was privileged to interview many of North America's finest memoirists. He has a book in electronic form called Memoir Writing for Smart People available for download. Stenson co-founded The Claremont Review, an international literary magazine that publishes young-adult writers aged 13 to 19. He worked for the magazine as an editor for more than twenty years and is proud that this magazine is still alive and well to this day. Bill Stenson lives in Victoria, B.C. with his wife poet Susan Stenson.

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David Lester is a musician, graphic designer and graphic novelist. His most recent book is Prophet Against Slavery: Benjamin Lay, A Graphic Novel (Beacon Press) created with Marcus Rediker and Paul Buhle. He also illustrated “1919: A Graphic History of the Winnipeg General Strike”, (published in English, German and French editions). 1919 was co-winner of the 2020 CAWLS Book Prize. Lester’s poster of anti-war protester Malachi Ritscher was exhibited at The Whitney Museum of American Art in New York. He is guitarist in the rock duo Mecca Normal, cited as an influence on the founders of the feminist social movement Riot Grrrl. He lives in Vancouver, Canada.

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