Format: Trade Paperback Category: Fiction
Price $16.95
Pub Date: August 30th 2010
ISBN: 978-0-9811376-9-8
Rights: World


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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.

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.

Award-Winning Finalist in the Historical Fiction category of the 2010 International Book Awards

Format: Trade Paperback
Category: Historical Fiction
Price $19.95 Cdn $16.95 US
Pub Date: April 2009
ISBN: 978-0-9811376-0-5
Rights: North America

Please note that the cover for The Polski Affair is a custom designed cover by Made by Design

The Polski Affair

is a fictionalised account of the role played by the Hotel Polski during the Nazi occupation of Warsaw. This was documented by Abraham Shulman in his long out of print non fiction book - The Case of the Hotel Polski

This is the story of Rosa Feurmann and others who found themselves as “guests” of the Hotel Polski during the Nazi occupation of Warsaw. The Hotel Polski mysteriously drew in Jewish survivors who wished to buy their way to freedom. Rosa, a Jewish partisan infiltrates the hotel. She is detected and comes under the personal control of the Hotel’s Nazi Commandant. What she did to survive continues to haunt Rosa’s life. She is called as a witness at the Commandant’s War Crimes Trial in Heidelberg and years later, she attends a reunion of the surviving hotel `guests’. It is only upon her return to Israel that Rosa ultimately reconciles her inner conflicts.

"An engrossing story written with skill and compassion within the context of historical reality."
Professor Gordon DiPaolo, Staten Island University

"A gripping tale that illustrates the moral ambiguity of the Holocaust and the struggle of ordinary people to retain their humanity under extraordinary circumstances."
Prof. Hava Tirosh-Samuelson, Head of Jewish Studies, Arizona State University.

"The Polski Affair weaves the fabric of history’s worst time and illustrates how we hang on threads of hope and find happiness in ways difficult to imagine. I marvel at its profound impact.
The pages flew through my hands as I lost myself in the story."
Dr Janice Johnson, Educator.

Those who had money made some attempts to try to shelter themselves from Nazi persecution. "The Polski Affair" is the fictional account of Rosa Feurmann, who found her way to survive the Nazi occupation of Poland in the Hotel Polski, a hotel which let Jewish survivors buy their protection from Nazi persecution. Rosa's time was not easy by any means, and events continue to haunt her years later. "The Polski Affair" is an entertaining and moving read.
The Midwest Book Review

For other reviews at:
Jew Wishes
Armchairinterviews

Leon H. Gildin - Author

Leon H. Gildin is an attorney who has represented writers, composers and actors. He has acted as both an attorney and a principal in the development of properties for television and motion pictures. He has also produced both on and off-Broadway.
In the midst of his legal practice Mr. Gildin authored a short story which became a play entitled, APPEAR AND SHOW CAUSE, which opened the season at the Cleveland Playhouse and was awarded the Audelco Award in New York for its off-Broadway production. Mr. Gildin also wrote, YOU CAN'T DO BUSINESS (OR MOST ANYTHING ELSE) WITHOUT YIDDISH published by Hippocrene Books, New York, which sold out and is still available on Amazon.com He has also translated Yiddish poetry and these translations have been published in various Anglo-Jewish publications.
The role of the Hotel Polski is a little known event that took place in Warsaw during the Nazi occupation as a result of which THE POLSKI AFFAIR can be classified as documentary fiction. It explores the moral struggle of those who survived and the fortuitous nature of that survival.
Mr. Gildin now resides in Paradise Valley, Arizona with his wife, Gloria.

Download sample chapters or purchase e-book here

Author discussion and Book Giveaway.

Meet the author

Format: Trade Paperback
Category: Fiction
Price $19.95 Cdn $16.95 US
Pub Date: May 2009
ISBN: 978-0-9811376-1-2
Rights: World

Please note that the cover for TheMercedes Variation is a custom designed cover by Made by Design

The Mercedes Variation

“A young Spanish lady lived in a tepee. In my mind she still dwells in her rudimentary rural home. She was clothed in strong, spare ideals and was an example to all of us who had alternate values. It’s no surprise that I was powerfully attracted…..”

The Mercedes Variation is an important novel, It is an unconventional love story set against the backdrop of the `Back to the Landers’ in rural Canada during the 1970s and 1980s. Values distilled from the `Flower Power’ of the 1960s, emerged in a concrete form with the new `hippies’ or `back to the landers’. The participants rejected urban consumerism and corporate business hierarchies and established their own rural communities. They stimulated declining economies and they permeated society with their ideas, endeavours and values. They also witnessed, and often benefited from, the eclipse of mixed farming into modern factory farming. The author, Chris Banner, was the publisher and editor of a rural newspaper and in an ideal position to chronicle, not only the demise of the small mixed farms, but to record the successes of the `back to the landers’. He was inspired by Laurie Lee’s `Cider With Rosie’ in documenting the decline of traditional farms. It is against this background that he has woven an exquisitely written, but unorthodox love story.

The Mercedes Variation is a carefully woven tapestry.

Reading at The Overleaf Book Store and Cafe in Victoria, B.C. on Feb 27th 2010

Chris Banner - Author

Chris Banner was raised on the edge of the Cotswold Hills in the west of England.
Years later as the publisher and editor of a rural newspaper in Eastern Ontario, he recorded the decay of an established rural society. Inspired by Laurie Lee's Cider with Rosie, these circumstances became the background for his love story, `The Mercedes Variation’. 
Chris Banner has an extensive career as a journalist and writer. He was a regular contributor to the Ottawa Citizen, a regular free lance writer for several Maclean Hunter magazines, including ` Driver Owner’ and `Bus and Truck’ and Publisher and Editor of The Lanark Era, one of Canada’s oldest weekly newspapers. He also co-owned and founded `Anthos’, an eastern Ontario Arts journal.
He moved to Canada’s west coast in the 1980’s and became a reporter and columnist for the Victoria Star and a freelance writer for Monday Magazine. He edited and photographed for `On The Waterfront’ a monthly maritime journal, later edited `Coastal Echoes’, an environmental journal and regularly contributed to `Cosmic Debris’ a Vancouver Island Music magazine. He has also contributed political commentary to the Victoria Times Colonist and `Impact’ magazine in Florida.
He was a finalist in the British Columbia Writer’s Festival Competition and his short story `Flight’ was published by Laughing Willow Books in `The Air Between Us’ – ISBN 0-9698975-0-2.

Download sample chapters or purchase e-book here

Format: Trade Paperback
Category: Fiction
Price $19.95 Cdn $16.95 US
Pub Date: July 2009
ISBN: 978-0-9811376-2-9
Rights: World

Please note that the cover for The Sunset Watcher is a custom designed cover by Made by Design

Peter is devastated when he learns of his half-brother’s murder in Colombia, but is determined to seek out those who knew him and learn the context of his last days. Peter’s experience as a bright young accountant in Ottawa does little to prepare him for the dangerous and turbulent world he confronts.
In Colombia he encounters drug cartels and right wing death squads, but he is helped in his quest by a renegade Quebec priest, a Colombian military officer, who was also a Korean War hero, a beautiful social worker, a street kid and his dog, and many others. When Peter finally returns to Ottawa, he has a great appreciation of his brother’s character and a better understanding of himself.
The experience changes his life.

Photo courtesy of Enise Olding

Barry Proud - Author

Barry Proud spent many years working as an economist and project leader in developing countries all over the world. His latest assignment in 2008 took him to Uganda on behalf of the World Bank.

The Sunset Watcher is his second book and first novel. Much of the background material for the story was gathered while living and working on a rural development project in Colombia during the height of the rise to power of the Medellin drug cartel.

Barry now lives with his wife, Zoila, in British Columbia.

Download sample chapters or purchase e-book here