New ebooks From Canadian Indies
Description
"Wonderland is everywhere, and we refuse to be small."
In this collection of essays, Lloyd Ratzlaff brings the prairie landscape to life through a capacious imagination charged with wonder and the gentle irony of an awareness tempered by time and love. Ratzlaff connects with the challenges posed by skepticism and belief, countering both the cynicism and doctrinairism of contemporary life with a renewed praise of the profound depths of the spirit and the natural world.
Contributor Notes
Lloyd Ratzlaff is the author of the literary nonfiction titles The Crow Who Tampered With Time, Backwater Mystic Blues, and Bindy's Moon. His essays are also featured in several anthologies, including Sons and Mothers: Stories From Mennonite Men; Reading the River: A Traveller's Companion to the North Saskatchewan River; and apart: a year of pandemic poetry and prose. A former minister, counsellor, and lecturer at the University of Saskatchewan, he has taught writing classes for READ Saskatoon, the Western Development Museum, and the University of Saskatchewan Certificate of Art and Design. He was a columnist for Prairie Messenger Catholic Journal through its last nineteen years of publication. He lives in Saskatoon.
Editorial Reviews
"The Crow Who Tampered With Time blossoms with essays that find radiance and coherence in a world (both natural and human) that formal religious dogma has forgotten. A visionary humility and an original, engaging voice make these essays and recollections both accessible and wonder-filled . . . This is a book of exquisite imagery, humorous observation, breathtaking honesty and profound insight. The essays pulse with emotional poignancy . . . " - All Lit Up
"The Crow Who Tampered With Time blossoms with essays that find radiance and coherence in a world (both natural and human) that formal religious dogma has forgotten. A visionary humility and an original, engaging voice make these essays and recollections both accessible and wonder-filled . . . This is a book of exquisite imagery, humorous observation, breathtaking honesty and profound insight. The essays pulse with emotional poignancy . . . " - All Lit Up
"I love the essay form and in Lloyd Ratzlaff's hands and heart, it achieves something wondrous . . . These essays are finally so rich and wise that I remembered them long after putting the book aside." - Theresa Kishkan, 49th Shelf
"Sometimes we read exactly the right book at exactly the right time in our life. The Crow Who Tampered With Time, a book of short, spiritual reflections by Saskatoon's Lloyd Ratzlaff, was a healing balm for me. I took it into my garden, pulled a chair into the sun, and didn't move again-except to wipe tears of joy and enlightenment- until I'd completed it...The author is a man who can sit alone in a park and announce to the air, 'I love this world, I love being here,' and, after reading his book, I was able to do that, too. Highly recommended." - Shelley A. Leedahl, SaskBooks Reviews
"Ratzlaff . . . evokes the spiritual growth in the natural world, without succumbing to the trendy, the trite, and the obvious reflections that the phrase 'spiritual growth' could threaten." - Erling Friis- Baastad, Books in Canada
"(Ratzlaff's) prose is so sensual, so sensitive to sound, and so layered with meanings that it often elicits a gasp of surprise, followed by delight over the rightness of the phrase. This is language to be savoured. . . It is not possible to read these short essays . . . without having one's vision expanded." - Edna Froese, Journal of Mennonite Studies
"This is a book of exquisite imagery, humorous observation, breathtaking honesty, and profound insight. As I read, the poignancy of each piece left me shaking my head, not knowing whether to laugh or cry. In many cases, it was both . . . This 'small' book carries within its pages the expansiveness of the prairie sky-it changes and deepens at each look." - Maureen Weber, Prairie Messenger
