historical nonfiction

MFA Alumni Book Highlights: From 50 to 80 Publications

/ Lynne Melcombe / Leave a comment

It’s been a while since I posted a rundown of books published by grads of the MFA in CNF program, and in that time the number has jumped from 50 to about 70—or 71, because I just added my own book to the list below.

I actually think the number is higher than that, maybe as high as 80, but I’m not sure everyone’s books are listed here. (I took this list from the UKing’s website.)

If your book(s)—either the one you started for your master’s degree or any you’ve published since then—aren’t listed here, please let me know and I will update the list.

(It’s great to see how many of us have gone on to write more books after that first one.)

Tamara Baluja (class of 2024) Nav Bhatia: The Heart of a Superfan, Penguin Random House Canada, 2024. Review to come. 

Niko Bell (class of 2023) Risk, Freedom, and the Future of Safe Sex, ECW Press, TBA.

Sheima Benembarek (class of 2020) Halal Sex: The Intimate Lives of Muslim Women in North America, Penguin Random House Canada, 2023.

Gloria Blizzard (class of 2021) Black Cake, Turtle Soup, and Other Dilemmas, Dundurn Press, 2024.

Alec Bruce (class of 2022) The Cooperators: The People Behind the Rebirth of a Nova Scotia Movement, Pottersfield Press, 2024.

S. Lesley Buxton (class of 2016) One Strong Girl: Surviving the Unimaginable—A Mother’s Memoir, Pottersfield Press, 2018.

Esmeralda Cabral (class of 2019) How to Clean a Fish and Other Adventures in Portugal, University of Alberta Press, 2023.

Michaela Cavanaugh (class of 2024) Present Tense: How We Reckon with the End of the World, McClelland & Stewart (Canada) and The New Press (US), 2027.

Marilyn Carr (class of 2020) Nowhere Like This Place: Tales from a Nuclear Childhood, Iguana Books, 2020. Review to come. 
How I Invented the Internet, Iguana Books, 2022.

Gregor Craigie (class of 2019) On Borrowed Time: Shaking Complacency in North America’s Seismic Zones, Goose Lane Editions, 2021.
Why Humans Build Up: The Rise of Towers, Temples, and Skyscrapers, Orca Publishing, 2022.
Radio Jet Lag, Cormorant Books, 2023.
Our Crumbling Foundation: How We Solve Canada’s Housing Crisis, Penguin Random House, 2024.

Pauline Dakin (class of 2015) Run, Hide, Repeat: A Memoir of a Fugitive Childhood, Penguin Random House, 2017.

Moira Dann (class of 2016) Craigdarroch Castle in 21 Treasures, Touchstone Editions, 2021.
Fat Camp Summer: Advice I Would Have Given My Parents, Sutherland House Books, 2025.

Deborah Dundas (class of 2023) On Class, Biblioasis, 2022.

Marsha Faubert (class of 2018) Wanda’s War: An Untold Story of Nazi Europe, Forced Labour, and a Canadian Immigration Scandal, Goose Lane Editions, 2023.

Amy Fish (class of 2023), One in Six Million: The Baby by the Roadside and the Man Who Retraced a Holocaust Survivor’s Lost Identity, Goose Lane Editions, 2025.

Catherine Fogarty (class of 2018) Murder on the Inside: The True Story of the Deadly Riot at Kingston Penitentiary, Biblioasis, 2021.
Someone You Know: An Unforgettable Collection of Canadian True Crime, HarperCollins, 2023.

Stacey May Fowles (class of 2015) The Girl in the Woods, McLelland and Stewart, 2018.
Baseball Life Advice: Loving the Game that Saved Me, Penguin Random House, 2017. 
Whatever Gets You Through: Twelve Survivors on Life After Sexual Assault, Greystone Books, 2019.
Good Mom on Paper: Writers on Creativity and Motherhood, Book*hug Press, 2022.

Joan Francuz (class of 2016) Press Enter to Continue: Scribes from Babylon to Silicon, 1920 House Press, 2018.

Kim Fraser (class of 2021) The Accidental Caregiver: Challenges and Triumphs of Intimate Family Caregivers, Sutherland House, 2022. Review to come. 

Maryanna Gabriel (class of 2022), On Earth as It Is: Walking the Camino, Pottersfield Press, 2023.

MJ Grant (class of 2016) A Cure for Heartache: Life’s Simple Pleasures, One Moment at a Time, Hodder, 2019.

Stephanie Griffiths (class of 2016) Sit Still and Prosper: How a Former Money Manager Discovered the Path to Investing with Greater Clarity, Calmness, and Confidence, Bird in the Sky Press, 2018. Review to come. 

Sue Harper (class of 2016), Winter in the City of Light: A Search for Self in Retirement, Amazon, 2019.

Suzanne Elki Yoko Hartmann (class of 2021) The Nail That Sticks Out: Reflections on the Postwar Japanese Canadian Community, Dundurn, 2024.

Virginia Heffernan (class of 2021) Ring of Fire: High-Stakes Mining in a Lowlands Wilderness, ECW Press, 2023.

Taslim Jaffer (class of 2022) with Omar Mouallem, Back Where I Came From: On Culture, Identity, and Home, Book*hug Press, 2024. Review to come. 

Kirk Angus Johnson (class of 2019) Some Kind of Hero: Love, Death, and Trauma in a Nova Scotia Town, Penguin Random House, TBA.

Kevin Kelloway (class of 2019) The Performance Equation, University of Toronto Press, TBA.

Kim Kierans (class of 2025) Journalism for the Public Good: The Michener Awards at Fifty, Bighorn Books, 2024. Review to come. 

Gwen Lamont (class of 2019) The View from Coffin Ridge: A Childhood Exhumed, Ginger Press, 2024.

Nellwyn Lampert (class of 2017) Every Boy I Ever Kissed: A Memoir, Dundurn Press, 2019.

Nellwyn Lampert with Pamela Oakley, Christian Smith, and Gillian Turnbull, eds., Bad Artist: Creating in a Productivity-Obsessed World, Touchwood, 2024.

Tyler LeBlanc (class of 2018) Acadian Driftwood: One Family and the Great Expulsion, Goose Lane Editions, 2020.

An artist's rendering of a river, mountains and trees in shades of grey, brown , and red, with the book title and author's name.

Lezlie Lowe (class of 2016) Nowhere to Go: How Public Toilets Fail Our Private Needs, Coach House Books, 2018.
The Volunteers: How Halifax Women Won the Second World War, Nimbus Publishing, 2022.

James MacDuff (class of 2024) with Mirriam Mweemba, The Illogical Adventure: A Memoir of Love and Fate, Pottersfield, 2025. Review to come.

Susan MacLeod (class of 2018) Dying for Attention: A Graphic Memoir about Nursing Home Care, Conundrum Press, 2021.

Leslie Marion (class of 2018) Easy Money: A Bankspeak Primer for Small Business, 4th Floor Press, 2020. Review to come. 

Jessica McDiarmid (class of 2016) Highway of Tears: A True Story of Racism, Indifference and the Pursuit of Justice for Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls, Penguin Random House, 2020.

Lori McKay (class of 2020) Searching for Mayflowers: The True Story of Canada’s First Quintuplets, Nimbus Publishing, 2024. Review to come. 

Lauren McKeon (class of 2016) F-Bomb: Dispatches from the War on Feminism, Goose Lane Editions, 2017.
No More Nice Girls: Gender, Power, and Why It’s Time to Stop Playing by the Rules, House of Anansi, 2020.
Women of the Pandemic: Stories from the Frontlines of COVID-19, Penguin Random House, 2021.

Lynne Melcombe (class of 2015) No Such Thing: A True Story of “Mild” Traumatic Brain Injury and My Twenty-Year (so far) Recovery, Iguana Books, 2026. 

Helena Moncrieff (class of 2016) The Fruitful City: Building Communities Around Nature’s Bounty, ECW Press, 2018.

Chris Moore (class of 2024) The Power of Guilt: Why We Feel It and Its Surprising Ability to Heal, HarperCollins (Canada), BenBella (US), August Books (UK), 2025.

Philip Moscovitch (class of 2019) Adventures in Bubbles and Brine: What I Learned from Nova Scotia’s Masters of Fermented Foods—Craft Beer, Cider, Cheese, Sauerkraut and More, Formac Publishing, 2019. Review to come. 

Jason Murray (class of 2016) A Distorted Revolution: How Eric’s Trip Changed Music, Moncton and Me, Nimbus Publishing, 2017. Review to come. 

Jesse O’Reilly-Conlin (class of 2019) Visiting Africa: A Memoir, Demeter Press, 2021. Go: A Memoir of Movement, Iguana Books, 2023. 

Robin Pacific (class of 2021) Skater Girl: An Archaeology of the Self, Guernica Editions, 2024. Review to come. 

A microphone and cords on a white tabletop.

David Pate (class of 2023) The Worst Songs in the World: The Terrible Truth about National Anthems, Dundurn Press, 2024.

Renée Pellerin (class of 2016) Conspiracy of Hope: The Truth About Breast Cancer Screening, Goose Lane Editions, 2018.

Jen Powley (class of 2015) Just Jen: Thriving Through Multiple Sclerosis, Fernwood Publishing, 2017.
Making a Home: Assisted Living in the Community for Young Disabled People, Fernwood Publishing, 2023.

Laura Pratt (class of 2020) Heartbroken: Field Notes on a Constant Condition, Random House Canada, 2023.

Adelle Purdham (class of 2022) I Don’t Do Disability and Other Lies I’ve Told Myself, Dundurn Press, 2024.

Andrew Reeves (class of 2016) Overrun: Dispatches from the Asian Carp Crisis, ECW Press, 2019.

Bonny Reichert (class of 2022) How to Share an Egg: A True Story of Hunger, Love and Plenty, Appetite/Penguin Random House (Canada), and Ballantine/Random House (US), 2024.

Dylan Reid (class of 2021) Messy Cities: Why We Can’t Plan Everything, Coach House Books, 2025. Review to come. 

Jo-Ann Roberts (class of 2023) Storm the Ballot Box: An Insider’s Guide to a Voting Revolution, Nimbus Publishing, 2025.

Jason Schreurs (class of 2022) Scream Therapy: A Punk Journey through Mental Health, Flex Your Head Press, 2023.

RC Shaw (class of 2017) Louisbourg or Bust: A Surfer’s Wild Ride Down Nova Scotia’s Drowned Coast, Pottersfield Press, 2018.
Captain Solitude: One Surfer’s Search for the World’s Greatest Sailor, Goose Lane Editions, 2024.

Sharron J. Simpson (class of 2021) The Kelowna Story: An Okanagan History, 2nd Edition, Harbour Publishing, 2025.

Christian Smith (class of 2017) The Scientist and the Psychic: A Son’s Exploration of His Mother’s Gift, Random House, 2021.

Suzanne Stewart (class of 2016) The Tides of Time: A Nova Scotia Book of Seasons, Pottersfield Press, 2018.

Karen Stiller (class of 2018) The Minister’s Wife: A Memoir of Faith, Doubt, Loneliness, Forgiveness and More, Tynedale House, 2019.
Holiness Here: Searching for God in the Ordinary Events of Everyday Life, NavPress, 2024.

William Sullivan (class of 2017) The City and the Smelter: How Against All Odds Did It Happen, First Choice Books, 2023. Review to come. 

Jon Tattrie (class of 2020) Peace by Chocolate: The Hadhad Family’s Remarkable Journey from Syria to Canada, Goose Lane Editions, 2020.

Gillian Turnbull (class of 2017) Sonic Booms: Making Music in an Oil Town, Eternal Cavalier Press, 2019. Review to come.

Jennifer Thornhill Verma (class of 2019) Cod Collapse: The Rise and Fall of Newfoundland’s Saltwater Cowboy, Nimbus Publishing, 2019.

Aaron Williams (class of 2017) Chasing Smoke: A Wildfire Memoir, Harbour Publishing, 2017.
The Last Logging Show: A Forestry Family at the End of an Era, Harbour Publishing, 2024.

Jennifer Robin Wilson (class of 2025) The Heart of Homestay: Creating Meaningful Connections When Hosting International Students, Page Two Books, 2025.

Gina Leola Woolsey (class of 2015) Fifteen Thousand Pieces: A Medical Examiner’s Journey through Disaster, Guernica Editions, 2023.

Remember, if you’re an MFA in CNF grad and you have a CNF book that’s not shown here, let me know and I’ll update this list in a future post.

Must-Read Nonfiction Books for Labour Day

/ Lynne Melcombe / Leave a comment

It’s Labour Day, a stat holiday for most of us, but one that few of us ever ponder the meaning of. As its name suggests, Labour Day originated as a day to honour the hard work and rights of society’s ordinary workers. This Labour Day, I thought I’d take a thematic look at books produced through the labour MFA CNF grads that pertain to labour. That said, I’ve taken a broad lens on labour that touches on diverse aspects of the way work, or the lack of it, impacts the lives of ordinary workers and their families.

A close-up of the grey-blue waves of The Atlantic Ocean on the cover of The Cooperators by Alec Bruce.

First up, Alec Bruce’s (class of 2022) The Cooperators: The Rebirth of a Nova Scotia Movement 1949-2024 (Pottersfield Press, 2024). Over the years, I’ve been involved in many cooperatives. I bank at a credit union; driven cooperatively owned cars; bought outdoor sporting goods at Mountain Equipment Co-op; and shopped for natural and organic foods for my family at a cooperatively owned grocery store.

This book honours the role of cooperatives in improving quality of life for everyday people. This is a meticulously researched book that covers the storied history of the cooperative movement in Nova Scotia beginning with its founding father, Father Moses Michael Cody. After a lull during the war years, new advocates emerged to carry the flag of the cooperative movement in Nova Scotia through a period of rebuilding to the success it’s enjoying today. Moreover, this history is interesting for anyone who’s ever used a co-op, even if they don’t live in Nova Scotia. 

In contrast, Deborah Dundas’s (class of 2023) slim volume On Class (Biblioasis 2023) looks less closely at labour than the lack of it. From a deeply personal perspective, she examines impacts of chronic un/der-employment that too many of us are quick to blame on those who are suffering. In most cases, it’s not the fault of individuals but an integral aspect of the free-market theory of capitalism. While many of us decry the injustice that has people living on the street, struggling for food, many fewer of us realize that this actually requires the existence of an economic underclass. In starkly poignant prose, Dundas describes how this theory works out in reality. Her book makes it easy for readers to see that the affluence of a few in our society rides on the backs of a much larger group of people with significantly less wealth. While most of those people are middle class and doing okay, some of them are inevitably doing much less than okay, living in tents, begging for coins at traffic lights, and scrounging food from garbage bins. As I write in my review:

The words Deborah Dundas On Class alongside a photo of worn work boots.

[T]he kind of poverty Dundas describes [is] the kind where you own only two sets of clothes and one of them is always dirty, where you can’t afford shampoo so you wash your hair with dish soap, where it’s not that you hope dinner won’t be hamburger again but that you’ll have dinner. That kind of poverty leaves its imprint well into adult life, when it reminds you over and over that you’re not worthy and you shouldn’t expect much out of life. Only a few, like Dundas, climb out of that deeply entrenched poverty, a climb that’s as much psychological as financial in that it has much less to do with pulling oneself up by one’s bootstraps than believing one is just as deserving of boots as anyone else.

The Nordic countries constantly show the rest of the world that there is something better than a system that depends on the misery of a considerable percentage to sustain the financial hoarding disorders of a select few. Dundas captures the unquantifiable impacts of this economic injustice and backs it up with hard, deeply disturbing facts. 

A vividly coloured painting of a red house on the shore of a blue sea teeming with fish, with a fishing boat off shore.

Unemployment is also a theme in Cod Collapse: The Rise and Fall of Newfoundland’s Saltwater Cowboys (Nimbus Publishing, 2019) by Jenn Thornhill Verma (class of 2019). Verma braids memoir with history in describing what life was like on “The Rock” for centuries before 1992. That was when the tragic overfishing of cod off Newfoundland’s Grand Banks resulted in a moratorium that put 30,000 cod fishers out of work overnight. Cod fishing had sustained thousands of families for a few centuries before the province’s labourers were plunged into an unprecedented level of poverty. And that’s saying something about a place where the grinding life of work at sea sustained whole families in one-room cabins without plumbing or central heating for many decades.

Yet many people loved that life as much as they love the rugged beauty of their island home, a place where jagged cliffs drop straight down to water so cold it can kill a human in minutes, a place where spring and summer are enlivened by whales spouting, puffins nesting, and icebergs floating by. Grounded in historical research brought to life by vivid, personal memories, Cod Collapse is a powerful read about what happens when the population of an entire island is forced change the way it works and lives overnight.  

A photograph of individual flowers and leaves arrayed against a white background with the title The Times of Time A Nova Scotia Book of Seasons and the author's name, Suzanne Stewart, in a font with a quaint, old-timey feel.

The Tides of Time: A Nova Scotia Book of Seasons (Pottersfield Press, 2018) by Suzanne Stewart (class of 2016) allows us to finish our review on a more optimistic note. Stewart take an imaginative look at the labour that sustains us—the work of food production. Dividing her book into four parts, one for each season, she focuses each month on the characteristics of that season, like fall colours in October and the heat of summer in July. Then, for each month, she visits and interviews one of the people whose work produces wholesome, natural, delicious food that reaches peak production at that time of year.

A professor of Romantic literature at St. FX, Stewart punctuates her lyric essays with quotes from Keats, Wordsworth (both William and Dorothy), and Thoreau. The result, to me, is a soothing read, a story to take in while curled up in a rocking chair by a fire on a fall evening or sipping an espresso on a patio on a Sunday morning. There is no labour in getting through these chapters, no rush to meet a deadline. The Tides of Time is just a leisurely stroll through the seasons while celebrating the unsung heroes of all our lives, the labourers who literally “give us our daily bread.” And that, after all, is what Labour Day is about.

These books look at labour from many dimensions, helping us understand and appreciate the ordinary people who make our lives possible, and often delightful. Take some time this Labour Day to consider which of these books, or many others, you might read to gain a better appreciation of the labourers we celebrate today, including those authors who have laboured so hard to produce these wonderful and informative examples of creative nonfiction writing.

The Power of Cooperatives: Alec Bruce’s Insights into the Cooperative Movement in Nova Scotia

/ Lynne Melcombe / 1 Comment

I’ve done my banking at a credit union since the late 1980s. I used to belong to Modo, a cooperative carsharing enterprise. I’ve found some of the best prices on organic produce at a cooperative grocery store. Many friends live in cooperative housing, an option I might pursue as I get older. 

Book cover titled 'The Co-operators: Rebirth of a Nova Scotia Movement 1949-2024' by Alec Bruce, featuring a background of ocean waves.

I believe in the power of cooperative ventures. So, when I saw the title of Alec Bruce’s (class of 2022) book, The Cooperators: The People Behind the Rebirth of a Nova Scotia Movement 1949–2024, it tweaked my interest. 

Corporate histories are generally commissioned by the companies whose histories they recount and are meant to be read by people who have an interest in that company. Like any other corporate history, Bruce’s book was commissioned (by the Cooperative Council of Nova Scotia). But a book about a cooperative movement is inherently different because cooperatives are inherently different.

The history of any cooperative venture is more than the story of an individual’s rise from rags to riches because it’s the history of a philosophy made manifest. Cooperatives came into being out of a belief that when people who are underserved by conventional institutions come together with purpose, their joint venture can not only serve them but others like them—people who are not wealthy and generally have no desire to be, people who just want fair shake in a world that often ignores them. 

When I look briefly at other cooperative histories, I see similar things: many of them started in the early 1900s, were driven by the efforts of a passionate few, may have gone through a period of decline, but have come back to life in the last few decades and are defying the belief that business can only be successful if it lacks heart and human interest. 

As Father Moses Michael Coady, the father of Nova Scotia’s cooperative movement, said, 

“It has been said that credit supports the borrower the way a rope supports the hanged. Many an unfortunate debtor has found this to be true. One of the chief arguments that proponents of private business advance against the co-operative system is that they give credit while the co-operative does not. They feel that after they have ‘carried’ so many people for such a long time, it is ungrateful of the people to seek to establish their own business.”

Poppycock, he said. It’s not ungrateful to want to house, feed, and clothe your family on your own terms. As beauty is in the eye of the beholder, credit is in the eye of the lender. If the lender is of sound moral character, invested both in his own and his community’s welfare, there’s nothing wrong with it. A credit union, he said, is perfectly designed to help people get out of the messes private businesses had put them in.

This has been my experience of all types of cooperatives: credit unions (the one I use in Vancouver and the one my brother uses in Toronto), cooperative associations that deliver weekly bins of organic produce at reasonable prices, cooperative housing for people who need housing security but can’t buy a house. 

The place for cooperatives in our society these days, where costs seem to be perpetually spiralling out of control, is almost limitless. I’ve patronized many cooperatively run worker -owned businesses, which give workers a real sense of investment in where they make their living. I’ve read about the power of cooperative structures lifting people in the majority world (a term I prefer to more value-laden terms like “third world” and “developing world) out of what seemed like hopeless poverty.

To me, this has always seemed like a brilliant idea, and Alec Bruce has done an admirable job of sharing the history of Nova Scotia’s cooperative movement in a way that can benefit anyone with an interest in exploring the coop philosophy—and maybe starting a coop of their own. 

For more Canadian history, check out:

Craigdarroch Castle in 21 Treasures, by Moira Dann

Murder on the Inside: The True Story of the Deadly Riot at Kingston Penitentiary, by Catherine Fogarty

Acadian Driftwood: One Family and the Great Expulsion, by Tyler LeBlanc

Highway of Tears: A True Story of Racism, Indifference and the Pursuit of Justice for Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls, by Jessica McDiarmid

Cod Collapse: The Rise and Fall of Newfoundland’s Saltwater Cowboys, by Jenn Thornhill Verma

Fifteen Thousand Pieces: A Medical Examiner’s Journey through Disaster, by Gina Leola Woolsey

Exploring Japanese Canadian Identity and History

/ Lynne Melcombe / 2 Comments

As a little girl, I had a pink and turquoise satin kimono. I can’t remember why I had it or where it came from; it likely had something to do with the dance classes I took for several years, and it was likely a gross misrepresentation of what it was meant to be. But until I was much older, it was all I knew of Japanese culture. 

Cover of the book 'The Nail That Sticks Out' featuring the title in bold letters, authors' names, and an image of a girl in traditional attire.

I was likely not alone in that. Yet the Japanese Canadian community has a rich history in Canada, a history that includes far more than the tragic and shameful chapter in Canadian history of the internment of all Japanese Canadian citizens during World War II and the confiscation of their property, for which they only received redress in 1988. 

In The Nail That Sticks Out: Reflections on the Postwar Japanese Canadian Community (Dundurn Press, 2024), Suzanne Elki Yoko Hartmann (class of 2021) combines family history and details of traditional Japanese culture with personal memoir. The result is a compelling account of a community that has endured through racism and hardship but must, Hartmann argues, be defined as far more than that.

There is a touching account of her grandfather, who painted beautiful watercolours but never considered his art good enough for more than scraps of newsprint and saved none of his paintings. There is the story of the cousin who, fearing academic disappointment, gave up all her dance classes—except traditional odori dance because she’d seen it give her grandmother so much joy. 

There are also the notes of persistent and systemic racism: the lack of Asian representation in theatre and film paired with underpayment of Asian actors when they do appear. The thoughtless souls who pop up everywhere with the ridiculous question every biracial person hears far too often: “What are you?” (To which Hartmann flippantly replies, “I’m still human, the last time I checked.”)

But even that history is slowly being erased, Hartmann writes:

From Camille’s [her daughter’s] perspective, most Torontonians “don’t know JCs exist, let alone the historical context” of the relocation after the war and how JCs became resettled … “Our trauma is only amplified. Only internment is ever talked about … “

In many ways this reality is reflected in the larger community. Despite Japanese planting roots in Canada more than a hundred years ago, JC history is slowly being erased. Each generation adds their own perspective on identity and culture. Camille’s generation—the gosei, or fifth generation—are almost entirely biracial. To the untrained eye, kids like Camille or their cousin Samantha easily pass for white. Just as my sister and I loosely resemble our parents, there are glimpses of us within our kids too. Our ethnicity may appear ambiguous, yet we share a rich cultural inheritance. 

Canada’s only Japantown in Vancouver is long gone. But here, in places like Markham’s J-Town and the downtown Toronto strip called Little Tokyo a string of savvy entrepreneurs have stepped in to serve up Japanese-infused shopping experiences Do consumers ever ponder the roots of our community as they stand in line with their matcha lattes and mochi ice cream, hoping to get their pork belly ramen or stamped cheesecake before they sell out? Unlike these stores, which offer the latest trends and tastes of modern-day Japan, other long-established cultural and religious institutions scattered throughout the Greater Toronto Area reflect the perseverance of JCs who were determined to rebuild their lives after the war.

Will anyone remember their struggles or history decades from now? With so few Japanese in Canada, will anyone care? When searching for information, I discovered a dark void, a dearth of evidence, and little mention of our Japanese congregation or the people who dedicated their lives to it. A lost legacy in a disappearing community. 

I sincerely hope not.

For more on family and culture, read:

How to Clean a Fish and other adventures in Portugal, by Esmeralda Cabral

Acadian Driftwood: One Family and the Great Expulsion, by Tyler LeBlanc 

How to Share an Egg: A True Story of Hunger, Love, and Plenty, by Bonnie Reichert

Essential Feminist Reads for International Women’s Month

/ Lynne Melcombe / Leave a comment

March 8 was International Women’s Day, and the month of March is International Women’s Month. With a nod to both, with this post I acknowledge several books from the Master of Fine Arts in Creative Nonfiction program that further the cause of justice and equality for women. 

Cover of the book 'Halal Sex: The Intimate Lives of Muslim Women in North America' by Sheima Benembarek, featuring ripe figs and a 'Staff Pick' label.

It’s hard to pick just a few books. The program is dominated by women, all of whom I’d describe as feminist, and many of their stories are about women’s lives, whether their own or others. But if I’m going to stick strictly to books with a decidedly feminist theme, I’d choose these five:

Halal Sex: The Intimate Lives of Muslim Women in North America by Sheima Benembarek. This book was eye-opening for me. It honestly never occurred to me that a blue-haired, niqab-wearing, orthodox Muslim woman might be polyamorous. It doesn’t surprise me that a child from a Muslim family might be just as likely as a child from any other family to be transgender. But I have to admit some surprise—the good kind—in reading about a same-sex couple, both comedians, one a Palestinian-born Muslim the other a Jew from Montreal who perform individually and as a pair who starred in a Crave comedy special called Marriage of Convenience. The title of the book, Halal Sex, comes from a term for sex practiced within a heterosexual Muslim marriage. But Benembarek put a decidedly feminist twist on it by redefining it as “all consensual sex between adults.” 

Book cover featuring the title 'Every Boy I Ever Kissed' by Nellwyn Lampert, with a graphic design showing a woman in a red dress and hands embracing her.

Every Boy I Ever Kissed: A Memoir by Nellwyn Lampert. I started calling myself a feminist at the age of 13. I was in way too much of a hurry to lose my virginity, which I did at 14. I had no idea of the connection between the two. But there is a connection, a pretty important one. And that connection is a major part of what Lampert wrestles with in this coming-of-age memoir. As the cover blurb says, “for Nellwyn Lampert, losing her virginity would turn out to be anything but simple. Her chosen partners struggled with porn-induced erectile dysfunction and other crises of masculinity. And in the bedroom, nothing went according to plan.” So, in that regard, our experiences were entirely different. But in terms of “the realities of sexual liberation, female empowerment, and masculinity,” the issues are not that different at all than the ones I was too young to realize I was doing with more than 50 years ago that sexual freedom and gender freedom are two very different concepts. 

Cover of the book 'Highway of Tears' by Jessica McDiarmid, featuring an illustrated mask and a striking orange background. The subtitle highlights themes of racism and justice for missing and murdered Indigenous women and girls.

Highway of Tears: A True Story of Racism, Indifference and the Pursuit of Justice for Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls by Jessica McDiarmid. It’s a grim fact that Indigenous women make up only about 4% of the female population in Canada but accounted for 16% of all female homicides between 1980 and 2012. And a disturbing number of those women are abducted, raped, and murdered along a strip of highway in northern BC called the Highway of Tears. From the back cover: “Journalist Jessica McDiarmid investigates the devastating effect these tragedies have had on the families of the victims and their communities, and how systemic racism and indifference have created a climate where Indigenous women and girls are over-policed, yet under-protected.” As difficult as this book was to read, it was just as difficult to put down. I can’t imagine a better lens through which to examine the intersection of racism and misogyny than through the horrific impacts of colonization by patriarchal white, European culture on Indigenous women and girls. 

Book cover of 'F Bomb: Dispatches from the War on Feminism' by Lauren McKeon featuring bold black text and a pink graffiti-style accent.

F Bomb: Dispatches from the War on Feminism by Lauren McKeon. It’s always surprised me that when I say I’ve been calling myself a feminist since I was 13 but I haven’t always felt that feminism welcomed me, what many people seem to hear is that I don’t think feminism is necessary or relevant. In fact, I’m saying exactly the opposite—that feminism remains as relevant today as ever and that’s why it’s so important to ensure that ALL sorts of women feel a sense of belonging within the movement. That was my read on McKeon’s book. She recognizes that too many women have moved in the wrong direction instead of understanding that feminism is for every woman—that, indeed, until we are all free, none of us are free. Why has this happened? That, as McKeon points out, is a question for feminists to answer. And as women’s rights are being eroded daily, it’s becoming increasingly urgent that we answer it and ensure that all women feel that the arms of feminism welcome them. 

Book cover for 'Conspiracy of Hope' by Renée Pellerin, featuring stylized illustrations of a woman's chest with highlighted areas, and subtitle 'The Truth About Breast Cancer Screening'.

Conspiracy of Hope: The Truth About Breast Cancer Screening by Renée Pellerin. No woman in the western world isn’t familiar with the unique joy (she said sarcastically) of having her breasts pulled and twisted and squished between cold metal plates for their regular mammogram. In this book, Pellerin, an award-winning producer with the CBC, does a deep dive into the evidence supporting and opposing regular mammography screening. And her conclusion is that the evidence weighs strongly in favour of less screening. It’s supported by vested interests, false positives can lead to invasive overtreatment, false negatives can give women a false sense of security, its effectiveness differs significantly for different age groups, and regular exposure to radiation can, in a small number of cases, increase risk of cancer. It’s an eye-opening book that every woman should read and consider carefully before assuming that doctor’s orders should never be questioned. 

Happy International Women’s Month and enjoy the reading!

Visiting Africa: A Personal Memoir and Reflection

/ Lynne Melcombe / 2 Comments

I can’t remember a time when I haven’t wanted to visit Africa. I love African music, traditional and modern. I love the colourful fabrics. I would love to see the animals I’ve admired on TV and in photos as up close and personal as safely possible. I’d like to witness the power of Victoria Falls in Zimbabwe and walk the desert sands of Namibia, and I’d be honoured and humbled to visit Robben Island, the brutal prison where Nelson Mandela spent 18 years of his life. 

A person walking along a sandy beach with a fishing spear, against a backdrop of blue sky and ocean, with the title 'Visiting Africa: A Memoir' prominently displayed.

So, when I saw that an alum of the UKing’s MFA program in creative nonfiction writing had published a book called Visiting Africa: A Memoir (Demeter Press, 2021), I jumped at the chance to read it. And I wasn’t disappointed. As a former PhD student with an interest in the slave trade, historic and modern, Jesse O’Reilly-Conlin (class of 2019) is well acquainted with his subject matter. Told in the first person and with raw honesty about his feelings as a privileged middle-class white man, this memoir is thoroughly engaging, and I’d recommend it to anyone. 

After an introduction that takes the reader from the author’s early life and the start of his interest in Africa through his public-school years, the book is written in two parts. In the first part, he describes his journey as a graduate student studying the forced migration of Africans while wrestling with personal feelings of inauthenticity and inadequacy. In the second part, he has set aside his efforts to learn about Africa from books and has embarked on a two-month journey as much into himself as through several countries in the south of the continent. His goal: to see and hear and feel the place he has worked so hard at learning about without ever really being there or immersing himself in the cultures. 

Part 2 opens with these words:

It’s May 2018, I am thirty-three years old, and I am on my way to Africa. Four years have passed since I left WITS [University of Witwatersrand in Johannesburg]. Four years have passed since I left South Africa, and the African continent, without doing so many of the things I had wanted. When people asked me whether I have been to Africa, I would always pause before answering “Yes, I have.” I had walked the streets of Johannesburg and Cape Town, of course, and my passport still contained my South African study visa. I had proof of a visit. Yet I wavered in responding in the affirmative because I knew the libraries and classrooms of Johannesburg and Cape Town better than those cities’ actual sites and sounds. Despite my living in Johannesburg, I spent so much time safely ensconced in my dorm room or in a library or in a classroom that Johannesburg, the real and dynamic city, seemed a thousand kilometres away. I had spent so much time reading and studying about migration in Southern Africa that I associated the word “Africa” with only words on the page, with a problem that needed fixing. I had come to experience South Africa, yet I remained as divorced from it as I had been in Toronto, Montreal, and Busan.

This trip would be different though. I have two months to explore Southern Africa—to put faces and sounds and smells to the worlds I had spent years reading and analyzing. Finally, I can step outside the book, the classroom, and the school. I can walk amid the people and their histories. I can visit their worlds. 

Through his eyes, O’Reilly-Conlin invites his readers to visit, too—to see the old slave forts and understand the suicides of captured Africans less as acts of despair than of defiance; to wander down the wrong street of a city and feel one’s own body go limp when the author is mugged; to enter a busy marketplace and hear dozens of languages representing as many proud and rich cultures; to look at sunlight streaming through bullet holes in the roof of a Rwandan church where a genocide deeply rooted in colonialism claimed forty thousand lives in minutes; to viscerally comprehend the persistent consequences of the transatlantic slave trade centuries after it ended. 

If you wish to understand racism better, confront your own privilege more deeply, or simply explore the history and current reality of life on the African continent, add this book to your reading list. 

If you enjoy travel memoirs, read the following books by MFA grads:

How to Clean a Fish and Other Adventures in Portugal, by Esmeralda Cabral

Walking the Camino: On Earth As It Is, by Maryanna Gabriel

Louisburg or Bust: A Surfer’s Wild Ride Down Nova Scotia’s Drowned Coast, by RC Shaw

For more on race and racism:

Wanda’s War: An Untold Story of Nazi Europe, Forced Labour, and a Canadian Immigration Scandal, by Marsha Faubert

Acadian Driftwood: One Family and the Great Expulsion, by Tyler LeBlanc

Highway of Tears: A True Story of Racism, Indifference and the Pursuit of Justice for Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls, by Jessica McDiarmid

How to Share an Egg: A True Story of Hunger, Love, and Plenty, by Bonnie Reichert

The Baby by the Roadside: A Remarkable Holocaust Story

/ Lynne Melcombe / Leave a comment

Having had three children of my own, I cannot imagine deciding that that only way to give at least one of them a chance to survive would be to abandon her at the side of a road and hope someone would save her. But that was exactly what Esther Silber did with her eight-month-old daughter, Rivka, right before she, her husband, and her older children were herded into train cars to join the ranks of the six million Jews whose lives and memories the Nazis attempted to erase from history in World War II. 

Cover of the book 'One in Six Million' by Amy Fish, featuring a light blue background with black and yellow text, highlighting themes related to the Holocaust and identity.

Miraculously, Esther’s baby girl survived. A Polish couple happened to be walking along the road where the baby had been abandoned. Following the sound of her cries, they found her, tightly swaddled, a note pinned to her blanket: Maria, November 25, 1941 (Esther had changed her name to something less Jewish-sounding). Approaching their forties, they’d always wanted but never conceived a child. So, despite the deadly risks to themselves for rescuing for what they knew was a Jewish infant, they took her home to raise as their own. 

From there, the story of Rivka’s/Maria’s life and her search, as an adult, to find clues to her origins or biological family only becomes more incredible. Yet it’s not only a true story; it’s also not entirely unique. Even seventy-five years after the war, Holocaust survivors continue to search for family members they believe to have been murdered but hope, on the slimmest of chances, might have lived. It’s amazing how many of them continue to find each other. 

Amy Fish’s (class of 2023) book, One in Six Million: The Baby by the Roadside and the Man Who Retraced a Holocaust Survivor’s Lost Identity (Goose Lane Editions, 2025) boasts a large cast of characters but just one real hero; a multitude of surprising plot twists and reversals of fortune; and tantalizing leads that compel the reader to keep turning pages but end up going nowhere. In her telling of a tale that could easily have been bogged down by extensive details, Fish endows this remarkable true story with all the hallmarks of a great British mystery.

It had been three years and two months since Maria first posted her question on JewishGen. It had been a year and eight months since Sarah told Stanley about the case. And it had been one year, eighteen weeks, and five days since Rabbi Kirchevsky packed Maria’s DNA in his suitcase and flew with it to New York. And finally, finally, after thousands of names of spreadsheets, hundreds of phone calls to complete strangers, and dozens of potential matches that turned out to be dead ends, they knew where to look.

Well, sort of. Sarah knew she could look at the Freund family in Krosno. But Sarah also logged onto Geni, a worldwide genealogical database, and ran a search for Freunds. She found a gaggle of them in Jaslo, a neighbouring town less than thirty kilometres from Krasno. Sarah promptly emailed Stanley, and Stanley immediately got to work. “With the kindness and cooperation of the Jaslo Urzad Stanu Cywilnego (Civil Registry Offices),” Stanley explained, “in combination with Ora’s input, it was possible to flesh out the entire family.”

Fish gives the bulk of the credit for the incredible research on this story to Stanley Diamond. A successful businessman, Diamond started a genealogical database when he retired twenty-some years earlier. His goal, at the time, was to warn Jewish relatives, close and distant, that the recessive gene for a serious genetic illness called beta thalassemia runs in the families of many Ashkenazi Jews, including theirs; they should have themselves tested before conceiving a child. But over the years, the work that became Stanley’s second career evolved. When Maria’s nearly impossible search came to his attention, he dug into it with fervour. 

But not all the credit goes to Diamond. As amazing as Maria’s story is, the details of a years-long genealogical investigation could become tedious in the wrong hands. (This is a challenge of creative nonfiction writing that the UKing’s MFA program in CNF teaches students to manage.) Fish seamlessly weaves in personal background of the key players in the search, the history of the Jewish people from millennia past to horrific details of the Holocaust, and facts about her own faith and culture as a Jew. 

An oft-related quote from the Talmud tells the faithful that: “Whoever saves one life saves the world entire.” In an act of courage and faith that I cannot fathom, Esther Zilber saved Maria’s life by leaving her on a roadside. Vasili and Antonina Markovitch saved Maria’s life by picking up the abandoned infant and, at no small risk to themselves, raising her as their own. Stanley Diamond and the anonymous “Sarah” may not save lives, per se, but they enrich them by reuniting severed families in ways that make them feel whole again.

Finally, we can never know how many lives Amy Fish might be enriching, or even saving, by showing them that, even in a world apparently gone mad, there is still light. There is still hope. 

Other books relating to war and survival:

Wanda’s War: An Untold Story of Nazi Europe, Forced Labour, and a Canadian Immigration Scandal, by Marsha Faubert

How to Share an Egg: A True Story of Hunger, Love, and Plenty, by Bonny Reichert

Peace by Chocolate: The Hadhad Family’s Remarkable Journey from Syria to Canada, by Jon Tattrie

Remembering Sacrifice: A Personal Ode to My Father

/ Lynne Melcombe / Leave a comment

On Remembrance Day, November 11, 2025, reposting this ode to my father.

The Space Between

A picture hangs in my living room, a sort of collage, but more organized, befitting its contents. It includes my father’s Royal Canadian Air Force wings and stripes from World War II, a green-and-gold RCAF emblem he embroidered while in traction for months in a veterans’ hospital, and two black-and-white photos, rimmed in gold. The pieces are carefully arranged against dark-blue cloth, framed in gun-metal grey with dignified flecks of gold. The photo on the left, taken before my father shipped out to England in 1942, depicts a handsome, athletic, optimistic, young man in his NCO uniform. To the right are his wings and stripes, a few threads out of place. From the photo on the right, the face I remember smiles out at me in his Pilot Officer uniform at the time of his medical discharge in 1945, still a handsome man.

In the first, he’s twenty-one. In the second, he looks much more than three years older. … (Read more here.)

A young man in an air force uniform with RCAF insignia, wearing a cap, posed for a black-and-white photograph.
Black-and-white portrait of a young man in a Royal Canadian Air Force uniform, wearing a cap with insignia, smiling confidently.

Books on war and peace by UKing’s MFA in CNF alumni:

Book cover of 'Wanda's War' by Marsha Faubert featuring a photograph of a young woman in historical clothing against a dark background, with the title in bold yellow text.

Faubert, Marsha (class ’18) Wanda’s War: An Untold Story of Nazi Europe, Forced Labour, and a Canadian Immigration Scandal, Goose Lane Editions, 2023. Review coming soon.

Book cover for 'One in Six Million' by Amy Fish featuring a blue background with images of a family and handwritten annotations.

Fish, Amy (class of ’23) One in Six Million: The Baby by the Roadside and the Man Who Retraced a Holocaust Survivor’s Lost Identity, Goose Lane Editions, 2025. Review coming soon.

Book cover of 'The Nail That Sticks Out' by Suzanne Elki Yoko Hartmann, featuring a child in traditional Japanese clothing with floral patterns against a golden background.

Hartmann, Suzanne (class of ’21) The Nail That Sticks Out: Reflections on the Postwar Japanese Canadian Community, Dundurn Press, 2024. Review coming soon.

Cover of 'How to Share an Egg' by Bonny Reichert, featuring a simple illustration of an egg against a blue background, with the title and author's name prominently displayed.

Reichert, Bonny (class of ’22) How to Share an Egg, A True Story of Hunger, Love and Plenty, Penguin Random House, 2025. Read my review here.

Tattrie, Jon (class of ’20) Peace by Chocolate: The Hadhad Family’s Remarkable Journey From Syria to Canada, Goose Lane Editions, 2020. Read my review here.

Cover of the book 'Peace by Chocolate: The Hadhad Family’s Remarkable Journey from Syria to Canada' by Jon Tattrie, featuring a family posing on a beach with the ocean in the background.

Must-Read Books from Recent Canadian Graduates: Part 2 of The List So Far

/ Lynne Melcombe / 1 Comment

So many new authors on this list! (For comparison, see the first list here.) Congratulations to all the newly published authors (at least since the first list), to all the authors who were published long before I reviewed your books, I’m reading as fast as I can, and to all the authors who’ve been published that I still haven’t got to … I’m reading as fast as I can! And to anyone reading this, if I’ve missed anything, gotten any details wrong, or in some cases don’t know the year you graduated, please let me know. And the winners are:

(Edited to add: Apparently I missed quite a few books that should go on this list. I’ve added them at the top of the list so you won’t miss them. There have been several more deals but the books aren’t out yet and I’m unable to find complete information about them.)

Barone, Rina (class of 20??) Art Always Wins: The Chaotic World of Avant-garde Pioneer Al Hansen, (press and year?)

Jaffer, Taslim (class of 2022) with Omar Mouallem, Back Where I Came From: On Culture, Identity, and Home. Book*hug Press, 2024.

Kierans, Kim (class of 2025), Journalism for the Public Good: The Michener Awards at Fifty. Bighorn Books, 2024.

Kuzmyk, Emma (class of 2025) with Addy Strickland, This Wasn’t On the Syllabus: Stories from the Front Lines. Simon & Schuster, 2024.

McKay, Lori (class of 2020) Searching for Mayflowers: The True Story of Canada’s First Quintuplets. Nimbus Publishing, 2024.

Moore, Chris (2024) The Power of Guilt: Why We Feel It and Its Surprising Ability to Heal. HarperCollins (Canada), BenBella (US), August Books (UK), 2025.

Moscovitch, Philip (2019) Adventures in Bubbles and Brine: What I Learned from Nova Scotia’s Masters of Fermented Foods—Craft Beer, Cider, Cheese, Sauerkraut and More. Formac Publishing, 2019.

Simpson, Sharon J. (class of 2021) The Kelowna Story: An Okanagan History, 2nd Edition. Harbour Publishing, 2025.

John Larsen’s (Class of 2023 I think) book is not out yet–due in 2026 I think. 

Book cover of 'Black Cake, Turtle Soup, and Other Dilemmas' by Gloria Blizzard, featuring a colorful abstract background with wavy lines.
Book cover for 'Press Enter to Continue: Scribes from Babylon to Silicon' by Joan Francuz, featuring an image of ancient scribes on a laptop screen.
Book cover for 'The View from Coffin Ridge: A Childhood Exhumed' by Gwen Lamont featuring a black and white photograph of a corridor with scattered leaves.

Book cover design for 'The Fruitful City' by Helena Moncrieff, featuring colorful illustrations of leaves and flowers, with the subtitle 'The Enduring Power of the Urban Food Forest'.
Book cover for 'Overrun: Dispatches from the Asian Carp Crisis' by Andrew Reeves, featuring various species of fish against a light blue background.
Book cover of 'Peace by Chocolate' by Jon Tattrie, depicting the Hadhad family by the sea, highlighting their journey from Syria to Canada.

Press Enter to Continue: A Journey Through 6000 Years of Writing

/ Lynne Melcombe / 1 Comment

I didn’t quite know what to expect when I opened Joan Francuz’s (class of 2016) book, Press Enter to Continue: Scribes from Babylon to Silicon (1920 House Press, 2018). It seemed like it might be a good choice to review for International Literacy Day, which is today, with this year’s theme being “promoting literacy in the digital era.” When I ordered it, I wondered if it might be a history of writers or maybe a history of writing tools. 

Book cover of 'Press Enter to Continue: Scribes from Babylon to Silicon' by Joan Francuz, featuring an image of ancient scribes on a laptop screen.

I was right and wrong on both counts. As the blurb on the back of the book says, “Trace the history of our digital age through the words of the people who described things—the scribes and technical writers of their time,” an appropriate description for what turns out to be “a work memoir of someone who survived the gig economy by working as a scribe.” 

Neither the title nor the blurb really do the book justice. It’s actually a short history of the world, at least since the first writing on stone tablets, through the lens of a person who spent most of her career as a technical writer—a career I considered 30 years ago when I was casting about for a writing gig that would be steadier and pay better than freelance journalism. (Because I’m technologically challenged, I turned to editing as a better option for me—still not great pay, but better.)

During the Master of Fine Arts program in Creative Nonfiction Writing, one thing we learned is that what you exclude from a book is just as important as what you include. This is important for me because I love research, and I try to include every bit of information I find. It doesn’t make for a great narrative arc. 

If I found it challenging to limit the amount of information I included in my book about concussion, a field in which research has exploded over the last two to three decades, I can’t imagine what it must have been like for Francuz to pick the pertinent bits out of 6,000 years of history to shape an arc in 155 pages. It’s mind boggling.

Not only has she succeeded, but she’s done so with dry wit:

In the hierarchy that runs up from data to information to knowledge and wisdom, data is something simple like “8”; information is the number of people invited to dinner; knowledge is making the dessert the day before the party; and wisdom is not discussing a spouse’s online shopping habits just before the guests arrive. 

While the ancients seemed to spend their time on the higher order questions of wisdom and knowledge, and sought answers to questions like what made for a good life, the scientists of the Enlightenment discovered knowledge and information about our physical world. In our modern age, we seem to have moved further down to the data and information end of the hierarchy. 

Think of a selfie that arrives on your device. Why is your friend standing in front of that building? Is this a reminder that you had plans for dinner—and you’re late? Is it a holiday photo? Are you meant to comment on their new hair or clothing? Was the photo sent to you by mistake? Is that really your friend in the photo? 

This is a modern example of data without information. 

This is an unexpected little gem of a book, full of fascinating facts gleaned from the books in a seven-page bibliography—enough to spawn a whole new version of Trivial Pursuit—with a 16-page chapter of Notes on Sources that reads like a mini-book of its own. Francuz’s story told with intelligence and humour by a woman of roughly my own age—born in the fifties, molded in the seventies, and seasoned by 40 years of working in the “gig economy” long before that term was coined.  

Even more importantly, the back-of-the-book blurb closes on a note I can truly relate to: “if you have a garden and a library, you have everything that you need.

Read my reviews of other books from the prolific class of 2016:

One Strong Girl: Surviving the Unimaginable—a Mother’s Memoir, by S. Lesley Buxton.

Craigdarroch Castle in 21 Treasures, by Moira Dann.

A Cure for Heartache: Life’s Simple Pleasures, One Moment at a Time, by Mary Jane Grant. Review coming soon.

Sit Still and Prosper: How a Former Money Manager Discovered the Path to Investing with Greater Clarity, Calmness, and Confidence by Stephanie Griffiths. Review coming soon.

Winter in the City of Light: A Search for Self in Retirement, by Sue Harper.

Nowhere to Go: How Public Toilets Fail Our Private Needs, by Lezlie Lowe.

Highway of Tears: A True Story of Racism, Indifference and the Pursuit of Justice for Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls, by Jessica McDiarmid.

F-Bomb: Dispatches from the War on Feminism, by Lauren McKeon.

The Fruitful City: Building Communities Around Nature’s Bounty, by Helena Moncrieff.

A Distorted Revolution: How Eric’s Trip Changed Music, Moncton and Me, by Jason Murray. Review coming soon.

Conspiracy of Hope: The Truth about Breast Cancer Screening, by Renee Pellerin.

Overrun: Dispatches from the Asian Carp Crisis, by Andrew Reeves.

The Tides of Time: A Nova Scotia Book of Seasons, by Suzanne Stewart.