Perilous Departures [Paperback]

There is wisdom and subtle wit in Macpherson and the people she has created . . . These stories should be savoured and reread. Perilous Departures is a winner. -- The Edmonton Journal

A small-town Bill Clinton look-alike agonizes over whether to accept a tempting offer from the CIA; an obese young woman finds love in a prairie café; a teenage girl struggles with a sexual predator as she hitchhikes on the autobahn; a newly divorced man tries to return his adopted children; two brothers and a sister take their father’s ashes back to the North, trying to make it over the ice road before break-up. These are just a few of the stories from Margaret Macpherson’s remarkable debut collection, Perilous Departures.

Perilous though they may be, all of these stories represent a departure from the ordinary and all celebrate the chaotic splendour of life. Each story, in its individuality, illuminates the path that leads home, but home isn’t always what we expect, and paths in Macpherson’s world are rarely straight and narrow. With compelling exuberance, Margaret Macpherson entices her readers to leave behind their familiar comforts and join her on an unpredictable journey of hazardous navigations. In Perilous Departures, the risks are many, the rewards transformative. Pubcomments: Margaret Macpherson recently won an Exporting Alberta Award for her work of non-fiction, Nellie McClung: Voice for the Voiceless.

Margaret Macpherson grew up in the Northwest Territories on the shores of Great Slave Lake and has spent the rest of her life in exile trying to figure out a graceful return to space and light.

Margaret is the author of four books of creative non-fiction: Outlaws of the Canadian West; Outlaws and Lawmen of the West; Silk, Spices and Glory: In Search of the Northwest Passage and Nellie McClung: Voice for the Voiceless. She holds a Masters degree in Creative Writing from the University of British Columbia and has worked as a teacher and journalist in Halifax, Bermuda, and Vancouver. She is now at work on a new novel. A number of the stories from this collection have appeared in Canadian literary magazines or have been broadcast on CBC Radio. Margaret lives in Edmonton with her husband and four kids.