In Sarah Robert’s debut collection Wax Boats, a rural island community comes to life in action-packed, evocative tales. Cougar ladies fight the BC wilderness and the inevitable extinction of their peaceful island lives. An expectant mother turns to Native traditions to guide her through a safe delivery. A Boy Scout troupe rescues their own leader, and learns to welcome someone “from away.” Wax Boats introduces thought-provoking characters caught between the encroaching modern, industrial world and the hard truths of lives lived at the edge of everything.

Sarah Roberts is an award-winning writer and a graduate of the University of Victoria's creative writing program. She has worked as a writer for the Ministry of Forests, Aboriginal Affairs, freelanced for newspapers and magazines and has published as a ghost writer. Her short stories have been published by literary journals in Canada, New Zealand, England and the United States. Roberts lives in Gibsons, BC, with her husband Eli, a bird and two tiny dogs. Wax Boats is her first book.

Sarah Roberts' profile page

• Winner, Danuta Gleed

Roberts’ dozen stories in Wax Boats are vibrant with the “genius of place,” to borrow a term from Ethel Wilson, as well as memorable characterization. Somewhat reminiscent of Kinsella’s "rez’" characters or Anne Cameron’s mélange of wacky west coast families, the stories reveal a complicated world of boats, beach camping, wild bush women and men, ancient lore, longhouses, cougars and beer.

BC Bookworld

Wax Boats