Finding Home - poster - Sept. 2024

The Slocan Community Library has asked me to read from The Road to Appledore on Wednesday September 18 at 7 pm. Because the library is an all-volunteer venture with limited hours, the reading will be in the Slocan branch of the Royal Canadian Legion, 502 Harold St. The event is free (by donation).

I’m pleased that I’ll be reading with Ross Klatte, a local author I’ve known since 1980; he worked in the library of Nelson’s David Thompson University Centre when I taught there. Ross will be reading from his new novel, Waiting for the Revolution, which is about 1960s-era young people coming to the West Kootenay in search of an alternative way of living. Given the subject matter of both books, we’re calling the reading “Finding Home”.

Originally a Minnesota farm kid who moved to the West Kootenay in 1971, Ross over the years has won the CBC Literary Competition for non-fiction, and a short story of his was shortlisted for the Journey Prize. In blurbing Waiting for the Revolution, I say: “The author’s consummate skill with words lets the reader feel how it is to live in a time when the goal of building, together with like-minded others, a more humane society seems almost within reach, even while old values—both within the characters and the larger community—still have power.”