Marilyn Stanley
, Noelle Walsh
, Margo Beredjiklian
, Melanie Solar
, Dani Kat
, Andrea Gillespie
, Natasa Ilic
, Barry Kazimer
, Jude Castillo
, Mary Therrien
, Linda Leitch
, Sarah Schwartz
, Sandra Perry
, Cassandra Schiemann
, Griffin Baker
, Laurie Burns
, Kim Cappellina
, KRISTINA WHITFORD
, Shawna Moodie
, Debra Fisher
, Melissa Kohlman
, Joe Mitchell
, Grace Novack
, Chris Carvalho
, Trish Bowering
, Joshua Lewis
, Judy Sawatsky
, Roselin Dueck
, Lois Coleman
, Crystal Inwood
, Kirsten Lyon
, Katie Jones
, Cynthia Heinrichs
, jane luce
, Zara Garcia-Alvarez
, Rhona Brinkman
, Rhona Brinkman
, Carl Scott
, Robert Sawatsky
, Randi Ann Doll
, Lynn Andrews
, Rosa Cross
, Rodney Cross
, Gwynn Scheltema
, Janice Cournoyer
, Sharon Schmidt`
, Karen Nordrum
, Deb Philippon
, Nora Gould
, Pearl Saban
, Hoda Montazeri
, zelda dwyer
, Karen Kendrick
, Ella Harvey
, Agnes Marshall
, Benita Hartwell
, Ken Gilmour
, Kailey Gallant
, Andrea Pole
, Sarah Wilson
, Jilanna Eagles
, PATRICIA SOPEL
, Joanne Kloeble
, Melissa Poremba
These graceful, probing personal essays by award-winning fiction writer Dora Dueck engage with a diverse range of ideas (becoming a writer, motherhood, mortality, the ethics of biography, a child's coming-out) because in non-fiction, she writes, “the quest for meaning bows to the experience as it was.” Yet within Return Stroke, one theme in particular does resonate—change. “How wonderful,” the author writes, that our “bits of existence, no matter how ordinary, are available for further consideration—seeing patterns, facing into inevitable death, enjoying the playful circularity of then and now.”
The book’s title, Return Stroke—the title of one essay, where it literally refers to lightning—suggests such a dynamic: “When I send inquiry into my past, it sends something back to me.” The topic of memory, in all its malleability, impermanence, and surprising power, is especially central to the collection’s concluding piece, an absorbing memoir of the author’s 1980s life in the Paraguayan Chaco. Whether she is discovering the more meaningful part that imagination holds within her religious faith or relating with astonishing clarity and honesty the experience of giving birth away from her home country, Dora Dueck’s beautifully written essays and memoir make her an insightful and generous companion.
