The Race And Other Stories By Sinclair Ross

Heralded as a prairie writer and best known for As For Me and My House and for his stories of the bleak dust bowl Prairies of the Great Depression, Sinclair Ross has also written of urban life and, briefly, of army life, as the stories in this collection demonstrate. The Race and Other Stories includes previously uncollected short stories and a chapter from Whir of Gold, here title "The Race," which stands on its own as a short story. Furthermore, "Spike," published in French in Liberté in 1969, appears here for the first time in English. Ross's taut, economical, rhythmic prose reflects the bleak, spare landscape of the prairie. The concerns of his novels are equally evident in his stories: loneliness and alienation, the sense of entrapment, the imaginative and artistic struggle. This collection of stories will be of interest to those who wish to better understand one of Canada's most respected writers and the diversity that can be found in his writings.

As For Me and My House is an essential Canadian work--a precise and compelling portrait of our culture, our psyche, and the nature of contemporary art itself, now available as a Penguin Modern Classic. In the windswept town of Horizon, an unamed diarist paints a vivid and enthralling picture of prairie life in the Depression era. Atmospheric, intimate, and richly observed, As For Me and My House is a moving meditation on the bittersweet nature of human relationships, on the bonds that tie people together and the undercurrents of feeling that can tear them apart. It is one of Canada's great novels and a landmark in modern fiction.

Sinclair Ross’ 1941 novel As For Me and My House is a masterpiece of Canadian literature, a stunning evocation of the Prairies and their inhabitants during the Depression of the Thirties. With The Lamp at Noon and Other Stories, an original New Canadian Library collection, Ross reveals further dimensions of his fictional universe. A woman’s impulsive infidelity leads to tragedy. A sudden hailstorm destroys hope. A boy learns to conquer a beautiful wild horse. A little girl dreams about a circus. Against the isolated, haunting landscapes of summer droughts and winter blizzards, the men and women of Ross’ stories grapple with fate against almost impossible odds. Marked by a legacy of pride that will not suffer defeat, Ross’ unyielding characters are cut off from their loved ones by obstinacy and defiance. Their tragedy is not that they suffer, but that they suffer alone. The sensitivity, compassion, and subtlety with which Ross portrays human aspirations and failings remain to this day unequalled in Canadian fiction.

On the eve of his retirement, Doctor "Sawbones" Hunter reflects on his career as a small-town physician. Introduction by Ken Mitchell.

A pioneering, dazzling satire about a biracial black girl from Philadelphia searching for her Jewish father in New York City Oreo is raised by her maternal grandparents in Philadelphia. Her black mother tours with a theatrical troupe, and her Jewish deadbeat dad disappeared when she was an infant, leaving behind a mysterious note that triggers her quest to find him. What ensues is a playful, modernized parody of the classical odyssey of Theseus with a feminist twist, immersed in seventies pop culture, and mixing standard English, black vernacular, and Yiddish with wisecracking aplomb. Oreo, our young hero, navigates the labyrinth of sound studios and brothels and subway tunnels in Manhattan, seeking to claim her birthright while unwittingly experiencing and triggering a mythic journey of self-discovery like no other.

Can Kiki and Jacques be friends—or are they just too different? Life could be better for twelve-year-old Jacques. His mother just died, his father is jobless, and his grandmother’s bridal store is on the verge of closing. At least he can look forward to the soccer season—after all, he’s a shoo-in for captain. But the arrival of Somali refugees shakes up nearly everything in his French-American Maine town, even soccer. Jacques isn’t the only star anymore—Mohamed is just as good as him, maybe better. School, church, sports . . . everything suddenly seems different. So Jacques is surprised to find himself becoming friends with Kiki, a smart, kind, and strong-minded Somali Muslim girl with a mysterious scar. Can kids as seemingly different as Jacques and Kiki be friends? Kiki and Jacques offers a realistic and heartwarming portrait of a town learning to embrace its changing face. A Bank Street College Best Children's Book of the Year

Catharine Parr Strickland Traill (1802-1899) emigrated from Great Britain to Upper Canada in 1832 with her husband Thomas Traill, a retired army officer. The Backwoods of Canada (1836), Catharine1s epistolary narrative based on her experiences in the country north of Peterborough in the years immediately following her arrival in North America, is an important record of nineteenth-century pioneering and a rich personal memoir of a woman. It has become a foundation work of Canadian Iiterature.