Format: Trade Paperback
Category:
Fiction
Price $16.95
Pub Date: July 2010
ISBN: 978-0-9811376-9-8
Rights: World
Please contact us to pre-order.
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In My Mother's Garden
In My Mother's Garden is a mind symphony that holds all the treasures and traumas of a little girl. The nine-year-old narrator, Cally Steinbach, brings us into her mother’s garden. It is in mama’s garden that every sense is awakened: the aroma of cinnamon bread, the songs harmonized after supper, the tangy touch of a gooseberry on the tongue and the first cracking of ice in the spring.
Prose, poetry, paintings and illustrations present the theme of prairie life in the 1940’s. The stories are set in four seasonal parts, beginning with a painting and a poem, and followed by short stories. This is a chronology of heart. Deep within dwells the wound that Cally's mother is away in a tuberculosis sanatorium, so Cally remembers when her mama was home, to keep her own heart beating and pulsing with the beauty of life. Such resilience of spirit softens the pain of despair and loss.
Connie Kurtenbach's short stories make us laugh, cry, moan, and even shiver at the dark side of humanity. Old photographs stir the memories of gladness and grief, and illustrations glimpse Cally’s imagination of cloud flying, gopher hunting, as well as a safe hiding place under the coats and caps of visitors on a guest room bed, or sleeping in the mitten box behind the kitchen door. Her mother’s garden is the safest place, for her mother is there. It is fenced and has a gate to keep out the wild things.
This is not a children’s story, but a child’s search for beauty and truth amid the shadow of sorrow, fear and longing. Cally’s spirit transforms her dark times to sensitive joy. Spring will soon arrive and Mama will come home.
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Connie Kurtenbach is the ninth child of a Saskatchewan farm family. She spent her early years on a very large farm and, then, moved with her retired parents to Cudworth. Connie attended the town school but completed secondary school at Sion Academy in Saskatoon. There, she spent twelve years in monastic life, teaching and studying. As Department Head of Music at Austin O’Brien Secondary School in Edmonton, “Sister Loyola” founded a number of music groups and produced an LP of folk music that brought the group to many well-received performances.
In 1967 Connie moved to secular life in Toronto where she continued her teaching career while pursuing further studies in English, Music and Clinical Psychotherapy. She performed as a soloist in revues, was an ensemble member in an original jazz opera, “Wheel of Fire,” read original works of poetry at several festivals, and was a member of several choirs that performed either classical or contemporary music.
After moving to Vancouver Island with her husband in 1986, Connie continued her counselling and writing endeavours, and got passionately involved in the design and building of their meandering garden. She joined painting groups, spiritual groups and finally joined the Chemainus Writer’s group in 2000. This group produced various short writings, and in 2005 successfully published an anthology of short works, entitled “The Oyster Speaks.”
Connie has been involved in the arts all her life. Gardening, writing, painting, counselling and all the renaissance studies are part of her life on Vancouver Island with the unfailing support of her husband.
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Format: Trade Paperback
Category: Poetry
Price $16.95 Cdn $14.95 US
Pub Date:August 2010
ISBN: 978-0-9811376-3-6
Rights: World
Please contact us to pre-order.
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PENELOPE Poems
This collection of one hundred poems by Penelope reflects her experience, insight and wisdom gained as a
performer,
observer,
traveller,
writer,
mother and
social activist.
These are extraordinary poems.
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Penelope Verkerk - Poet
Penelope Verkerk was born in Victoria and grew up in Halifax.
In the sixties, she wrote and acted in an award winning art film, Zero the Fool. She went on to write radio scripts and lyrics and performed poetry with Bruce Cockburn, Irving Layton and Duke Redbird.
She has travelled extensively and lived in Crete, in Peru and in California, where she was on staff at a Buddhist Art Centre.
Penelope currently resides in Victoria where she writes and performs.
She has contributed to numerous anthologies including,
Poetry Nation, Poetry is Agency, Poetry of Relevance 1 and 2 ,
Image 5 and Big Words.
She also publishes on International websites such as
World Dharma, and Native Women's Assoc. of Canada. She has published
in various magazines, calendars and journals such as Third Space
and Focus Magazine.
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