From award-winning author Merilyn Simonds, a remarkable biography of an extraordinary woman — a Swedish aristocrat who survived the Russian Revolution to become an internationally renowned naturalist, one of the first to track the mid-century decline of songbirds.2022 Foreword Indies Award Winner for the Editor’s Choice Prize, non fiction“[A] lyrical, passionate, and deeply researched portrait.” — Margaret Atwood

To whom do we offer refuge — and why?After a life that rubbed up against the century’s great events in New York City, Mexico, and Montreal, 96-year-old Cassandra MacCallum is surviving well enough, alone on her island, when a young Burmese woman contacts her, claiming to be kin. Curiosity, loneliness, and a slender filament of hope prompts the old woman to accept a visit. But Nang’s story of torture and flight provokes memories in Cass that peel back, layer by laye...

In a dark and stifling Kingston attic overflowing with old letters, pamphlets and clippings, an incredible discovery was made: scores of flimsy sheets of paper, hastily scribbled upon—a clandestine correspondence between a schoolgirl living in the village of Portsmouth in 1919 and a convict imprisoned in Kingston Penitentiary.A dazzling blend of historical detective work and imaginative recreation, The Convict Lover takes the reader on a haunting, unforgettable journey through the ...

An intoxicating debut novel that twines the lives of two women on the same land, a century apart.Alyson Thomson has left the city for a simpler life on an abandoned farm with her lover, Walker, a potter. Wandering there, she uncovers, in the ruins of a log cabin, the writings of a young woman who lived more than a hundred years before. Into Alyson's story Merilyn Simonds weaves the moving tale of Margaret MacBayne, who, with her family, left behind hardship in a se...

Cassandra lebt zurückgezogen auf einer kleinen Insel in Ontario, die ihr schon zu Kinderzeiten als Refugium diente. Doch die Jugendtage der 96-Jährigen liegen weit zurück, ihre Neugier und ihr Wissensdrang hatten sie einst als Krankenschwester hinausgeführt in die Welt: nach New York, Mexiko und Montreal. Sie hat die großen Umbrüche und Katastrophen ihrer Zeit erlebt – und ihren Sohn verloren, der als Pilot der Royal Canadian Airforce in Südostasien im Krieg umgekommen ist. Doch nun erhält...

A whimsical, provocative romp through a woman’s life with penises.   Originally published in the anthology In the Flesh, edited by Lynne van Luven and Kathy Page, Brindle & Glass (2012). I didn’t know what to expect. Not a pale, soft snail curled on a taut peach (peach because of the cleft, though it looked more like a rubber ball, it was that exact dull pink, the texture rough).             Wan...

Following the death of an uncle, a woman moves through a CT scanner to the brink of her own mortality.Originally published in Going Some Place: Creative Nonfiction Across Canada, edited by Lynne Van Luven, Coteau Books (2000).Beep. Take a breath and hold it.That is all.Beep. Take a breath and hold it.That is all.Beep. Take a breath and hold it.The machine gives the command and I obey, sucking in air as if through a straw. But have I t...

On the sudden death of her husband, Mary Ann sells her worldly possessions and sets off to visit seven people she has never met.Originally published in the anthology Seventeen Women Undress a Man, published in Germany (2005) and in The Netherlands (2007), this story was published in Dutch in Vrij Nederland (2006) and in English in The Walrus (2005), where it won the Silver Award for Fiction at the National Magazine Awards.Mary Ann didn’t think she would want the casket open...

What is a garden? A yearning to bring nature close? Or a bid for total control?  The Paradise Project explores in 17 short-short stories the human response to the planted world. Meet the minor diplomat who populates the earth with his lurid purple-fruited plant; the woman encased in a circling bower; the artist who paints a garden for love; the writer who adds a goldfish to a stranger's sidewalk idyll; the couple who contentedly care for a father's garden until Will comes...

From award-winning author Merilyn Simonds, a remarkable biography of an extraordinary woman—a Swedish aristocrat who survived the Russian Revolution to become an internationally renowned naturalist, one of the first to track the mid-century decline of songbirds.Referred to as a Canadian Rachel Carson, Louise de Kiriline Lawrence lived and worked in an isolated log cabin near North Bay. After her husband was murdered by Bolsheviks, she refused her Swedish privilege ...

What begins as a road trip through America soon becomes a journey of discovery into themselves and into the heart of the next-door neighbour they thought they knew. For Wayne Grady, the thrill of landscape and history is tempered by memories of racism and his own family roots. Merilyn Simonds, her ear tuned for the offbeat, finds curious echoes of the ex-pat promised land she grew up with. Together they travel against the tide of American history, followin...