And The Birds Rained Down

An award-winning and haunting meditation on aging and self-determination. A CBC Canada Reads 2015 Selection! Finalist for the 2013 Governor General's Literary Award for French-to-English Translation Deep in a Northern Ontario forest live Tom and Charlie, two octogenarians determined to live out the rest of their lives on their own terms: free of all ties and responsibilities, their only connection to civilization two pot farmers who bring them whatever they can't eke out for themselves. But their solitude is disrupted by the arrival of two women. The first is a photographer searching for survivors of a series of catastrophic fires nearly a century earlier; the second is an elderly escapee from a psychiatric institution. The little hideaway in the woods will never be the same. Originally published in French, And the Birds Rained Down, the recipient of several prestigious prizes, including the Prix de Cinq Continents de la Francophonie, is a haunting meditation on aging and self-determination. 'Nostalgic and beautifully grotesque, this novel is delightfully baroque and, although short, so striking it will simply never leave you.' —The Coast

Away From Her meets Strangers on a Train in this follow-up to cult bestseller And the Birds Rained Down After And The Birds Rained Down, a stunning meditation on aging and freedom, Jocelyne Saucier is back with her unique outlook on self-determination in this unsettling story about a woman’s disappearance. Gladys might look old and frail, but she is determined to finish her life on her own terms. And so, one September morning, she leaves Swastika, her home of the past fifty years, and hops on the Northlander train, eager to put thousands of miles of northern Quebec between her and the improbably named village, and leaving behind her perennially tormented daughter, Lisana. Our mysterious narrator, who is documenting these disappearing northern trains, is eager to uncover the truth of Gladys’s voyage, tracking down fellow passengers and train employees for years to learn what happened to Gladys and her daughter, and why.

Night Became Years is poetry in the sauntering tradition of the flâneur. Stefanik loafers his way over sacred geography and explores his own mixed heritage through the lexicon of Elizabethan canting language. Comparing the terminology of fifteenth-century English beggar vernacular with a contemporary Canadian inner-city worldview, the poems in Night Became Years unfold as separate entities while at the same time forming a larger narrative on the possibilities of poetry today and the nature of mixed-blood identity.

#1 NATIONAL BESTSELLER The boundary- and genre-bending non-fiction collection from the Giller-longlisted, GG-shortlisted and Canada Reads– winning author of Jonny Appleseed. “The land and its elements are my aunties calling me home, into that centre point which is a nowhere, by which I mean a place that English has no words for, is an everywhere, is a bingo hall, is a fourth plane, is an ocean.” Making Love with the Land is a startling, challenging, uncompromising look at what it means to live as an Indigenous person “in the rupture” between identities. In these ten unique, heart-piercing non-fiction pieces, award-winning writer Joshua Whitehead illuminates the com­plex moment we’re living through now, in which Indigenous and non-Indigenous peoples are navigating new and old ideas about “the land.” He asks: What is our relationship and responsi­bility towards it? And how has the land shaped ideas, histories, words, our very bodies? Intellectually thrilling and emotionally captivat­ing, this book is a love song for the world—and for the library of stories to be found where body meets land, waiting to be unearthed and summoned into word.

SHORTLISTED FOR THE MAN BOOKER INTERNATIONAL PRIZE 2019 AN INTERNATIONAL BESTSELLER "Readers who like quiet, meditative works will enjoy this strangely affecting buddy story." —Publishers Weekly "Rather than tying up the loose ends, she leaves them beautifully fluttering in the wind, and you do not feel lost in that experience. The writing is poetic and it’s worth savouring." —Angela Caravan, Shrapnel A bad dream leads to a strange poetic pilgrimage through Japan in this playful and profound Booker International-shortlisted novel. Gilbert Silvester, eminent scholar of beard fashions in film, wakes up one day from a dream that his wife has cheated on him. Certain the dream is a message, and unable to even look at her, he flees - immediately, irrationally, inexplicably - for Japan. In Tokyo he discovers the travel writings of the great Japanese poet Basho. Keen to cure his malaise, he decides to find solace in nature the way Basho did. Suddenly, from Gilbert's directionless crisis there emerges a purpose: a pilgrimage in the footsteps of the poet to see the moon rise over the pine islands of Matsushima. Although, of course, unlike the great poet, he will take a train. Along the way he falls into step with another pilgrim: Yosa, a young Japanese student clutching a copy of The Complete Manual of Suicide . Together, Gilbert and Yosa travel across Basho's disappearing Japan, one in search of his perfect ending and the other a new beginning. Serene, playful, and profound, The Pine Islands is a story of the transformations we seek and the ones we find along the way.

An abandoned mine. A large family driven by honour. And a source of pain, buried deep in the ground.

Now that we've sold ourselves to ourselves, shuffling letters and sounds around to hide the pain, how do we represent the uncanny valley in which we've set up shop? In Cursed Objects, Jason Christie recoils in horror at the thoroughness of his self, then begins to write toward a new understanding brokered between all the things that define him and who he thinks he should be and interrogates how we reduce people to words, especially online, turning them into objects.

For fans of Cheryl Strayed, the gripping story of a biologist's human-powered journey from the Pacific Northwest to the Arctic to rediscover her love of birds, nature, and adventure. During graduate school, as she conducted experiments on the peculiarly misshapen beaks of chickadees, ornithologist Caroline Van Hemert began to feel stifled in the isolated, sterile environment of the lab. Worried that she was losing her passion for the scientific research she once loved, she was compelled to experience wildness again, to be guided by the sounds of birds and to follow the trails of animals. In March of 2012, she and her husband set off on a 4,000-mile wilderness journey from the Pacific rainforest to the Alaskan Arctic, traveling by rowboat, ski, foot, raft, and canoe. Together, they survived harrowing dangers while also experiencing incredible moments of joy and grace -- migrating birds silhouetted against the moon, the steamy breath of caribou, and the bond that comes from sharing such experiences. A unique blend of science, adventure, and personal narrative, The Sun is a Compass explores the bounds of the physical body and the tenuousness of life in the company of the creatures who make their homes in the wildest places left in North America. Inspiring and beautifully written, this love letter to nature is a lyrical testament to the resilience of the human spirit. Winner of the 2019 Banff Mountain Book Competition: Adventure Travel