- Paperback: 264 pages
- Publisher: Brindle and Glass (Feb 1 2010)
- Language: English
- ISBN-10: 1897142455
- ISBN-13: 978-1897142455
- Product Dimensions: 21.6 x 16.4 x 1.7 cm
- Shipping Weight: 408 g
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: #340,028 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
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Product Details |
Product Description
Review
"Horsdal has done well at creating a cast of nuanced, likeable characters." —Gulf Islands Driftwood
(20100501)"[Sweetness from Ashes] invites us to live a more fully eamined life and move from lament to realization and resolution." —Focus Magazine, May 2010
(20100222)"Sweetness from Ashes is a confident and accomplished debut." —January Magazine
(20100220)"The story is a lovely one . . . Horsdal manages to show that while prejudice is alive, it is diminishing." —Times Colonist
(20100228)"A vibrant novel that begins to evolve when a death brings generations together and allows family stories to emerge." —Canadian Bookseller
Book Description
Set partially in Vancouver, partially on a farm in rural Ontario and partially in West Africa, Sweetness from Ashes is a novel about family in its various forms. When Sheila, Jenny and Chris decide to respect a deceased relative's wishes, and return the ashes to the family farm, the three begin a journey that takes them from their present-day lives in Vancouver to a deeper discovery of their roots and the family's past. In Ontario, they meet their cousins and start to reconcile with a buried history. Mixed into the story is a book that Jenny is editing, a memoir of an Englishman living in the colonial Gold Coast in the 1950s. The link goes beyond the manuscript and interweaves with the Ontario family farm, and the new generation of people who have come home.
Sweetness from Ashes is a vibrant novel with a voice and perspective that is contemporary but gives a nod to the past.
(20100515)
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Amazon.com:
5.0 out of 5 stars (1 customer review)
5.0 out of 5 stars
Connecting one Global Family, April 14 2010
By Story Circle Book Reviews - Published on Amazon.com
This review is from: Sweetness from Ashes (Paperback)
Genealogists will love Sweetness from Ashes, Marlyn Horsdal's ambitious novel based on a far-flung interracial family. The matriarch identified as Pat has died. In her will she directed her three children to bury her ashes at the hundred-year-old family farm now owned by a distant cousin.Characters flit in and out of the narrative like so many butterflies, serving to establish the diverse lives of the three while emphasizing their ability to maintain a close relationship with each other. To fulfill their mother's wishes, the siblings, two half sisters and a step brother, travel from Vancouver to Ontario. There they embrace the serene setting of the family farm and the cousin they never knew, unaware of the revelations that await them.
The technique of a narrative within a narrative is sometimes difficult to accomplish, but Horsdal achieves the transition as we become immersed in the story of a government worker who lived in Ghana with his wife many years before. We wonder how these people are connected to the three siblings and the distant cousin who happens to be married to a woman from Ghana.
Strands of rebellion are evident from the gentle rebellion of the siblings, the implied rebellion of their mother, and the cultural rebellion of the cousin, perhaps serving to illustrate their acceptance of what they cannot change and envision what they can.
The novel, Horsdal's first, presents a fine example of how members of a multiracial family can keep alive their individual cultures while welcoming the traditions of others. If you haven't traced your family history, Sweetness from Ashes, will inspire you to do so.
by Diana Nolan
for Story Circle Book Reviews
reviewing books by, for, and about women
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