There is a dreamlike quality to many of the stories in this new collection from Wayne Curtis. In Wild Apples, he returns to familiar themes of love and longing, and the push-pull emotions which inevitably accompany any attempt to break free of the ties that bind. Simple pleasures abound in these evocative stories, be it fishing on the river, gathering beans for an evening supper (are they beans or has-beens?), or listening to the jukebox at the local diner.

Curtis mines the shaft of everyday experiences, turning each one into a meditation on human nature. In the title story, an afternoon drive yields fertile ground as a father and son stop to shake down a gnarled crab apple tree for the sweet-sour orbs of autumn. With a seemingly effortless style, he casts his line into the river of the past, reeling in tales of youthful folly, the Christmastime birth of a little sister, and life on the Miramichi River, which could be any river, anywhere. Curtis also shares his insight into well-known friends, including novelist David Adams Richards and Yvon Durelle, the Fighting Fisherman. His contemplation of the life and work of Robert Frost casts a fresh light on the Pulitzer Prize-winning poet.

Wayne Curtis was born in Keenan, New Brunswick, in 1943. He was educated at the local schoolhouse and St. Thomas University where he majored in English. He has won the Richards Award for short fiction, The Lieutenant Governor's Award, and the CBC Drama Awards. Wayne's stories have appeared in literary journals: The Cormorant, The Fiddlehead, Pottersfield Portfolio, The Nashwaak Review, The Antigonish Review, The Dalhousie Review, New Brunswick Reader, New Maritimes and the anthologies Atlantica, Country Roads, The STU Reader, Winter House, The Christmas Secret and Winter. His short stories have been dramatized on CBC radio and CBC television.

In the spring of 2005, Wayne Curtis received an Honorary Doctorate Degree (letters) from St. Thomas University. In 2014 he was awarded the Order of New Brunswick. In 2018 he received the Senate Sesquicentennial Medal from the Canadian Senate and in 2023 he received The Queen's Platinum Jubilee Award. Wayne has lived in southern Ontario, Yukon Territories and Cuba. He currently divides his time between his cabin on the Miramichi River and his apartment in Fredericton, New Brunswick. Our Christmas Guest is his twenty-second published book.

Wayne Curtis' profile page

"Happy picking."

<i>Globe and Mail</i>

"Wild Apples is a volume mixed with appropriate portions of nostalgia, memory, and love for a time that will never return."

<i>Daily Gleaner</i>