June Hutton

In the early 1920s, 29-year-old Lila Sinclair moves to a small town to take over her deceased uncle's newspaper business. She finds a printing press in great disrepair, a mining town with dangerous working conditions, divided into a white community and a Chinese community, with a lot of prejudice. The book includes real-life figures Morris "Two-Gun" Cohen and Dr. Sun Yat-Sen, whose efforts would bolster a revolution in China. The book also features Puccini's opera La Faniculla del West, with themes of intercultural love. Lila finds herself drawn to her Chinese printer, Vincent, who is involved with Dr. Sun and Two-Gun.

The writing is wonderful. Ms. Hutton can write about sensory imagery so well! She can also delve deeply into the thoughts and feelings of her main characters (as she showed in her previous novel, Underground). Lila's honesty, vanity, bravery, insecurities....they all shine through in this somewhat quirky story. Lots of humour, lots of tragedy; this is a great read.… (meer)

A writing couple searches for answers when Alzheimer's causes one of them to lose the place where stories come from — memory.

At the age of fifty-three, Tony walks away from a life of journalism and into an unknown future. June is forty-eight, a writer and teacher, and over the following decade watches as her husband changes — in interests, goals, and behaviour — until Tony has a fall, ending the life they had known.

A diagnosis is seven years away, yet the signs of Alzheimer’s are all around. A suitcase Tony packs for a trip is jammed with four umbrellas, a visual symbol of cognitive looping. But how far back do these signs go? The couple starts probing the past and finding answers. This is not an old person’s disease.… (meer)

Albert Fraser enlisted to fight in World War I at the age of sixteen. This is the story of his life: wounded in the war, he returns home to conflict and tragedy. He lives through the Great Depression, including spending time in a work camp and joining the early union movement. And he returns to life as a soldier in the Spanish Civil War.

Through it all, Al longs for a simple life: the love of a good woman, a job, a family. We watch his life, and history, unfold in this novel that is exquisitely written; the author is able to paint vivid pictures without long descriptions. She can portray Al's feelings with great depth and insight, yet succinctly.

I loved this book -- I will definitely look for more by this author.… (meer)