A Tale of Two Fiddlers The Early Days of Sports and Life in Charlottetown
Publisher: Acorn Press$22.95This is the story of the Charlottetown family as seen through the eyes of the oldest boy, Fred “Fiddler” MacDonald. This memoir tells of Frederick James’ journeys in the City, starting with his days as a newspaper and a shoe-shine boy while attending Queen Square School, an all-boys Catholic school in the centre of the City. The story retraces his paper route in the mid-1950’s and the people that he encountered in his travels.
Deep Water Pearls A Collection of Women’s Memoir
Editor: Kathleen HamiltonPublisher: Acorn Press$22.95Thirteen writers dive into the deep emotional waters of their lives to write their most personal, honest stories. In doing so they transform the grit of female experience into pearls of truth and beauty.
Guided by memoir coach and editor Kathleen Hamilton, the writers reveal the most intimate turning points in their lives, memories deeply charged with meaning, moments after which their lives were never the same.
The stories are diverse: we meet a PEI farm girl exploring her early intuitive knowings, a tattooed millennial struggling with PTSD, a mature academic rebounding from the betrayal of her marriage, and a bride whose wedding day is a triumph over a treacherous past.
In The Strength it Took to Ditch You, a woman reveals her years in an abusive same-sex relationship. High School Reunion is set in Unit 9, a psych ward in Charlottetown. In The Waiting Place, a young mother from western PEI explores the meaning of home.
Somewhere North of Where I Was
Publisher: Acorn Press$22.95Somewhere North of Where I Was is the heartrending story of a young girl whose childhood innocence was stolen. Retold with the reflective voice of a woman who has survived and transcended the trauma of childhood poverty, neglect, and abuse, Spence’s wisdom and poignant storytelling abilities suck you into the world of a little girl whose tragic circumstances are tempered with fond family memories. One may be left to wonder how it is a child can survive and move beyond such experiences.
With brazen honesty and a driving spirit of hope, perseverance and sometimes sheer stubborn will, Spence brings the reader into her world as she lived it, moving us along, pulling us apart, compelling us to continue reading. In the years of being shuffled from one alcoholic parent to another and finally into foster care, Spence becomes a little girl we cry for, love and and cheer for. Spence is everybody’s child.
The Bygone Days Folklore, Traditions & Toenails
Publisher: Acorn Press$22.95Reginald—better known as “Dutch”—Thompson is a multi-faceted storyteller with unforgettable voices—those of Roy from Murray Harbour North, Adelaide from Bunbury, Gus from Chepstow, and countless others—to tell the stories of the Bygone days in Prince Edward Island [sometimes NS, too]. Stories that, without Dutch’s talent and care, might be remembered only by family and close friends or lost altogether.
Remember when the train ran from tip to tip and along all the small branches, taking goods, people, and baseball teams to other parts of the Island? How about when ice cream and two pieces of cakes cost 10 cents at White’s Ice Cream Parlour on Kent Street? When lobster was not the gourmet’s delight it is now and the backs were used to fertilize the crops? That butchering the pig before a full moon will mean less fat on the meat? Or that it was bad luck to cut your nails on Sundays.
From CBC Radio to the pages of this book, you’ll hear Dutch’s voice encouraging these informative, illuminating, poignant, and hilarious stories from the minds and hearts of Maritimers born between 1895 and 1925, almost as if they were all still here and telling them to you.
