New Releases by Linda Spalding

"1855. À la frontière de la Virginie et du Kentucky, la ferme des frères Benjamin et John Dickinson croule sous les dettes lorsque survient un abolitionniste du Nord qui encourage les esclaves à fuir. Déterminé à retrouver sa mère et sa fille déjà libres au Canada, Bry est le premier à partir, suivi de dizaines d'autres. Bientôt la ferme est saisie par la banque. John, aussi prédicateur itinérant, rassemble alors les siens vers une nouvelle vie à l'ouest. Quand, à la dernière minute, il abandonne le groupe, sa femme, ses deux filles et son fils Martin, âgé de 13 ans, doivent affronter l'inconnu. Après une rencontre en cours de route, Martin et Bry deviseront d'un plan pour amener l'esclave en fuite au Canada en toute sécurité, mais chaque membre de la famille en sera changé à jamais."--Back cover.

It’s 1855, and the Dickinson farm, in the bottom corner of Virginia, is already in debt when a Northern abolitionist arrives and creates havoc among the slaves. Determined to find his mother and daughter, who are already free in Canada, Bry is the first slave to flee, and his escape inspires a dozen others. Soon, the farm, owned by one brother and managed by another, is forfeited to the bank. One of the brothers, who is also a circuit-riding preacher, gathers his flock into a wagon train to find a new life in the west. But John Dickinson has a dangerous secret that compels him to abandon the group at the last minute, and his wife, two daughters, and thirteen-year-old son, Martin, now face life on the trail and an unknown future alone. After a fateful encounter along the way, Martin and Bry will hatch a plot to get Bry safely to Canada, but each member of the family will be changed, tormented, excited, and exposed by the journey. Linda Spalding brings an astonishing empathy to the telling of the fate of each of the travelers and to their shifting inner lives—compoundedof grief, fear, anger, and hope. Rich in character and incident, A Reckoning brilliantly-creates an America that was: the undefiled beauty of its lands and the grand mix of settlers and Native Americans; blacks and whites; riverboat captains, small businessmen, and people leaving one life behind for another they can only just begin to see. It moves with irresistible force toward an ending at once cataclysmic, inevitable, and profound.

Writers from Alice Walker to Michael Ondaatje to Claire Messud share their thoughts on one of the most vital gatherings of writers and readers in the world. The Palestine Festival of Literature was established in 2008 by authors Ahdaf Soueif, Brigid Keenan, Victoria Brittain and Omar Robert Hamilton. Bringing writers to Palestine from all corners of the globe, it aimed to break the cultural siege imposed by the Israeli military occupation, to strengthen artistic links with the rest of the world, and to reaffirm, in the words of Edward Said, "the power of culture over the culture of power." This Is Not a Border is a collection of essays, poems, and sketches from some of the world's most distinguished artists, responding to their experiences at this unique festival. Both heartbreaking and hopeful, their gathered work is a testament to the power of literature to promote solidarity and hope in the most desperate of situations. Contributing authors include J. M. Coetzee, China Miéville, Alice Walker, Geoff Dyer, Claire Messud, Henning Mankell, Michael Ondaatje, Kamila Shamsie, Michael Palin, Deborah Moggach, Mohammed Hanif, Gillian Slovo, Adam Foulds, Susan Abulhawa, Ahdaf Soueif, Jeremy Harding, Brigid Keenan, Rachel Holmes, Suad Amiry, Gary Younge, Jamal Mahjoub, Molly Crabapple, Najwan Darwish, Nathalie Handal, Omar Robert Hamilton, Pankaj Mishra, Raja Shehadeh, Selma Dabbagh, William Sutcliffe, Atef Abu Saif, Yasmin El-Rifae, Sabrina Mahfouz, Alaa Abd El Fattah, Mercedes Kemp, Ru Freeman.

Pennsylvania, 1798. Na de dood van zijn vrouw blijft Daniel Dickinson met vijf jonge kinderen achter. Als hij een overhaast huwelijk met een vijftienjarig weesmeisje sluit, wordt hij uit de quakergemeenschap gestoten en besluit hij met zijn gezin naar Virginia te vertrekken. Na een lange reis vol ontberingen begint hij een nieuw leven als boer. In tegenstelling tot Pennsylvania is Virginia een staat waar slavernij wettelijk is toegestaan. Als overtuigd quaker is Daniel daar fel op tegen. Toch wordt hij op een veiling onbedoeld eigenaar van de jonge slaaf Onesimus. Dat vormt de aanzet tot een reeks dramatische ontwikkelingen. Een indringende roman over liefde en opoffering, over vrijheid en gebondenheid. Een tijdloos boek dat de lezer sprakeloos achterlaat. `Een mus valt ter aarde is een epische roman die er op alle niveaus toe doet in reikwijdte, diepte, en in the heart. Uit het juryrapport `Meeslepend Een van de mooiste historische romans die de afgelopen jaren verschenen. National Post Canada

Mere’s young life is confined to the wind and water, the boat that she lives on docking only long enough to stop at the grocery store or visit the library, but never long enough to take out any books. That would mean having a library card, and a library card would mean revealing your name on a government form. Mere, her mother, Faye, and Mark, the mysterious teenage runaway who shares their boat, seem destined to sail around the Great Lakes forever, navigating the Persephone through the deep waters, stopping in Toronto twice a year to pick up envelopes of cash left with the dockmaster. Faye is a fugitive, still pursued for her part in the violent one-year anniversary events marking Chicago’s 1968 “Days of Rage”—a seminal student protest against the Vietnam war. Now Merril, Mere’s father, has suddenly appeared on the boat after many years. The authorities are looking for him and Faye is his ticket to freedom. But, in a desperate bid for her own adolescent freedom, Mere makes a choice that will change everything. Mere is a wonderfully electric novel about the inexorable bond between mothers and daughters, written by two of Canada’s most talented writers—themselves mother and daughter. Rich in its allegorical and sociological strands, it reaches into the Greek myth of Persephone; it explores a woman’s primeval need to protect her child; and it lays bare the explosive events of a touchstone period in our history. A novel of choices and consequences, betrayal and atonement, Mere builds lyrically to a shattering climax, an ending that haunts long after the last page is turned.

Winner of Canada's 2012 Governor General's Award for Fiction In this provocative and starkly beautiful historical novel, a Quaker family moves from Pennsylvania to the Virginia frontier, where slaves are the only available workers and where the family’s values and beliefs are sorely tested. In 1798, Daniel Dickinson, recently widowed and shunned by his fellow Quakers when he marries his young servant girl to help with his five small children, moves his shaken family down the Wilderness Road to the Virginia/Kentucky border. Although determined to hold on to his Quaker ways, and despite his most dearly held belief that slavery is a sin, Daniel becomes the owner of a young boy named Onesimus, setting in motion a twisted chain of events that will lead to tragedy and murder, forever changing his children’s lives and driving the book to an unexpected conclusion. A powerful novel of sacrifice and redemption set in a tiny community on the edge of the frontier, this spellbinding narrative unfolds around Daniel’s struggle to maintain his faith; his young wife, Ruth, who must find her own way; and Mary, the eldest child, who is bound to a runaway slave by a terrible secret. Darkly evocative, The Purchase is as hard-edged as the realities of pioneer life. Its memorable characters, drawn with compassion and depth, are compellingly human, with lives that bring light to matters of loyalty and conscience. This ebook edition includes a reading group guide.

When a murder occurs in beautiful Hawaii, the suspects are two young mainlanders on their honeymoon. Mayann Acker is eighteen-years-old. Her husband, William, is twenty-eight and just out of prison.Linda Spalding is chosen as a juror for Maryann's trail. Surprisingly, the chief witness against her is William. Spalding has her doubts, but on the last day of the trial she is abruptly dismissed from the jury. Maryann is found guilty. Who Named the Knife is the story of how, eighteen years later, Spalding tracks down Maryann and uncovers much more than the answer to the question of her innocence. A complex journey into the twists of fate that spin two lives down different paths, Who Named the Knife offers profound insight into the human heart.

Rien de bien inquiétant, croit-on à première vue, derrière les surfaces lisses et propres qui dessinent les contours d'une ville assoupie. Pourtant, des trottoirs humides de Dundas aux lampadaires grisâtres de Parkdale, les formes qui se reflètent dans la nuit sont comme de drôles d'oiseaux de malheur. Ce sont les signes volatiles d'un grand jeu de piste urbain où il faut cavaler à perdre haleine pour ne pas être rattrapé par le passé, l'exubérance du désir ou la folie des grands espaces.

Never before has the Dayak culture been described from the inside, by an indigenous woman born and raised in the rainforest listening to the stories and legends of her tribe, who are famous as the "head- hunters of Borneo." In this vivid memoir - that speaks to readers everywhere about the powerful effects of change - Riska tells us what it means to move in one's lifetime from a rainforest culture to the modern world.

Recounts Spalding's journey to locate Birute Galdikas in Borneo's threatened jungles, where Galdikas has been working to study and protect the endangered orangutans

"Rousseau's prescription for us, who have drifted so far from our origins, was to make two journeys, one to a place where life is still uncorrupted, and another into the self." In The Follow, novelist Linda Spalding travels to Borneo, first with her two daughters and later alone, in search of the famed orangutan scientist Birute Galdikas. What she finds instead is an unholy mix of foreign scientists, government workers, tourists, loggers, descendants of Dayak headhunters, Javanese gold miners, captive and wild orangutans. Her journey is the equivalent of a "follow," during which a tracker watches, over a course of time, an orangutan's movements and the effect of the animal on the surrounding environment. Spalding's follow takes her from Galdikas's Orangutan Foundation International offices in Los Angeles to her subject's original research station on the crocodile-infested Sekonyer River in Kalimantan. What unravels along the way is a story of relationships among women, people and animals, and natives and eco-tourists. Woven through these reflections is Spalding's own incredible story of her journey up the Sekonyer River and what she learns along the way.

Kansas-born Jess marries Paul and removes with him to the sultry paradise of Hawaii to challenge Paul's haunting past. All goes well until an act of disloyalty exposes Jess to the mythical beliefs of Hawaii, and she discovers the true weight of her husband's betrayal and heritage. The author weaves a chilling tale of old memories, secrets, and a clash of cultures--with an undercurrent of peril throughout.

As evocative of an era as it is psychologically penetrating, "The Paper Wife" is the story of a friendship, a triangle, and a trial by fire as three young friends struggle to find their moral footing during the turbulent years of the Vietnam War.