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Review: Home Run

Home Run by Paul Kropp  [Doubleday Canada]
Reviewed by PRCS

This was an enjoyable and quick read. Although aimed at the teenage market 14+, I would say 16-18 would be a better age group for this novel as some descriptions contain rather adult content.

This book is a follow-up to Running the Bases which I have not read. The story takes place in Canada.  Alan Mackin has started his first year of uni, saying adieu to his old
home life with his parents and  their restrictions.  But the university world is more complex then ever.

Review: Stealing Mercury

Stealing Mercury by Lori Cayer [J. Gordon Shillingford Publishing]
Reviewed by Christine Thorpe

Do You Notice The Blue of Sky

The two epigraphs to this selection from Lori Cayer's book of poetry Stealing Mercury read:

A hundred thousand impression
from the spirit
are wanting to come through here.
                            I feel stunned
in this abundance, crushed and dead.

                                             Rumi

What is the name
of the deep breath I would take over and over
for all of us? Call it

Whatever you want, it is
happiness, it is another one
of the ways to enter fire.

                                        Mary Oliver

Upon reading these lines, I am prepared to plummet into difficult poems with divergent themes but I am hoping there will be an optimistic undertone, a looking on the bright side of things as well. It is, of course an entirely heroic gesture for a poet whose project is the dissection of the body, family and relationships to claim possession of words from the likes of Rumi and Oliver yet I am inspired to read on. I flip the book over and read on the back cover that her poems are about "peeling back the layers of family life until we can see the 'glistening knot of bone'  beneath." Oh no, on second thought I don't know if I am prepared to read further.

Review: The Wild Girl

The Wild Girl by Jim Fergus  [Hyperion Books]
Reviewed by PRCS

This book was a wonderful reading from start to finish.  Takes place during the depression in 1930's American midwest, it is the story of a young Apache girl 'la nina bronca' who was so wild the hunter who found her in the caves, bought her in to town put her in jail.  Curosity got the better of local people so the sheriff charged admission for people to come and see her.

Although certain historical events are in this book, everything is a work of fiction i.e. The Great Apache expedition which is basically the story before the capture of la nina branca.