Literary Press Group

FictionThe Town That DrownedRiel Nason • Goose Lane EditionsFalling through the ice at a skating party and nearly drowning are solid grounds for embarrassment. Butwhat Ruby Carson saw during that fateful hallucination was her entire hometown—houses and people—floating underwater. Soon everyone discovers that a massive dam is being constructed and their homeswill eventually be swallowed by rising water. As the town prepares for its demise, fourteen-year-old Rubywatches from a front-row seat.Winner of the 2012 Commonwealth Book Prize and 2012 Margaret and John Savage First Book Award.Riel Nason writes about antiques and collectibles for the daily Telegraph-Journal. Her short stories haveappeared in The Malahat Review, The Antigonish Review, Grain, and The Dalhousie Review. The Town ThatDrowned is her sensational debut novel.Key words: Canadian novel, Regional identity – New Brunswick, Literary studies,Women’s literary traditionsISBN-13: 9780864926401paperback / 280 pp5.5 x 8.5 / $19.95September 2011Chasing FreedomGloria Ann Wesley • Roseway PublishingChasing Freedom tells the story of Sarah Redmond, a slave on a South Carolina plantation. Upon beingfreed after the American Revolutionary War, Sarah and her family are sent to the first all-Black communityin North America: Birchtown, Nova Scotia. With her Certificate of Freedom in hand, Sarah finds thather new home is barren, cold and isolated, and that in a world slow to forget old fears and hatred, hercertificate offers her freedom in name only.Gloria Ann Wesley is an African-Nova Scotian writer who published her first book of poetry, To MySomeday Child, in 1975. She later published Woman, Sing (2002) and Burlap and Lace (2007).Key words: Canadian novel, Historical fiction, Canadian history, Regional history – Nova Scotia,Black Loyalists, African-Canadian identities, American Revloutionary war, SlaveryISBN-13: 9781552664230paperback / 240 pp5.5 x 8.5 / $18.95September 2011Body TradeMargaret Macpherson • Signature EditionsBody Trade weaves together two stories of survival. The main narrative follows Rosie and Tanya, twoyoung Canadian women who leave the Northwest Territories and head south on an ill-conceived roadtrip through California, Mexico, and Central America. The story takes a life-defining twist when theirsearch for freedom and adventure brings them into contact with predators of the Central American sextrafficking trade. The girls’ journey is punctuated with scenes from a plane crash in the far North,underlining the novel’s themes of survival, betrayal, and hope, asking the reader: “What would you doto save your own life?”Winner of the NorthWords Prize for Body Trade, Margaret Macpherson is a writer and teacher,originally from Canada’s Northwest Territiories. She has worked as an essayist and journalist, and is apublished poet and the author of four non-fiction books, a short story collection, and two novels.Key words: Canadian novel, Literary studies, Feminism, Women’s literary traditions,Indigenous identitiesISBN-13: 9781897109502paperback / 304 pp5.25 x 9 / $19.95September 2011Literary Press Group / Congress 2013 17