National Network for Equitable Library Service

In this new edition of Jack Hodgins’ Governor General–winning novel (for 1979), the reader is taken into the everyday eccentricities of life in Port Annie on the west coast of Vancouver Island, a town that keeps slipping into the ocean and whose people have long been in a continuous slumber. Everything changes, however, when a beautiful sea nymph is washed ashore from a stranded freighter. People begin grasping at new possibilities.

Twelve-year-old Jolene is determined to find independence from her brother, Michael, during a family trip to research the Halifax explosion of 1917 for her father's Museum of Disasters. When her grandfather finds a time crease into the past, Jolene discovers a new friend and the importance of family and loyalty in a world torn apart by World War I. Once Michael joins them, however, the past suddenly becomes much more complicated. He inadvertently threatens Jolene's friendship with a grieving family, and his careless comments spark speculation that they are spies.

Broken Trail is the story a thirteen-year-old white boy, the son of United Empire Loyalists, who has been captured and adopted by the Oneida people. Striving to find his vision oki that will guide him in his quest to become a warrior, Broken Trail disavows his white heritage — he considers himself Oneida. But everything changes when Broken Trail, alone in the woods on his vision quest, is mistakenly shot by a redcoat soldier. Broken Trail is taken to the soldier's camp and then sent south on a mission to deliver a message to Major Patrick Ferguson that could save many lives.

Arrow through the Axes concludes the “Odyssey of a Slave” trilogy that began with the Red Maple–nominated Torn from Troy, retelling Homer’s Odyssey. The slave Alexi, now free of his Greek captors, infiltrates the Greek strongholds of the Bronze Age in search of his sister. In so doing he participates in the stories of Orestes, son of Agamemnon, as he seeks revenge for his father’s murder, and of Telemachus, son of Odysseus, who lands on Ithaca, the home island of Odysseus, just in time to witness the arrival of a mysterious stranger.

In her fourth historical novel dealing with British North America and the American Revolution, Jean Rae Baxter focuses on Broken Trail, a young boy who was born white but captured and adopted by the Oneida people. The great Mohawk leader Thayendanegea - known to Euro-Canadians as Joseph Brant - has chosen Broken Trail to assist him in the daunting task of uniting all the tribes and nations with the goal of establishing a country of their own.

Jack Hodgins‘ first book, published originally in 1976, is once again in print — in a new edition. Winner of the Eaton's Book Prize and nominated for the Governor General's Award, Spit Delaney's Island, a collection of short stories, put Vancouver Island on the map as a Canadian literary locale and set Hodgins off on his literary career. Hodgins' prose brings Vancouver Island to life in its touch, its taste and the sound of its dialects — a determinedly real world.

Thirteen-year-old Johnny Anders is something of a misfit, with no friends and a poor school record, but all this begins to change when he is awakened one night to find a soldier-ghost in his bedroom. Johnny is taken back to meet a series of unusual heroes in Canada's war history. These include Joan Bamford Fletcher, who commandeered Japanese soldiers to take hundreds of wounded civilians to safety through the jungles of Indonesia, and the much-decorated Raymond Collishaw, through whom Johnny learns that Canada played a role in the Russian Revolution.

In this hauntingly beautiful novel with its palette of blues and greys, Danial Neil explores the world of Reuben Dale after the sudden death from a stroke of his beloved wife, June. Neil takes us inside suffering to show us the thoughts and feelings of the one left behind. Lost without the woman he has loved and leaned on, Reuben wanders aimlessly for a time in the little town of Seaside on the Sunshine Coast where he had retired with his wife with expectations of leisure time to sail. But now their sailboat, my June, named after his wife, remains tied to the dock.

In this fascinating historical novel, twelve-year-old Jolene travels back in time to the year 1903 and finds herself in the coal mining town of Frank on the eve of Canada's deadliest rockslide. Disguised as a boy, Jolene must face the wrath of an impatient teacher, challenge her ability as a gymnast, and disentangle herself from an embarrassing love triangle. She must also face the fact that the generous people of the town of Frank are living in the path of disaster and she cannot save them.

In this sequel to the prize-winning young adult novel Submarine Outlaw, the sea of myth and legends beckons young Alfred once again, and the intrepid young explorer answers the call. With his loyal crew of a dog and a seagull by his side, Alfred sails across the Atlantic in his homemade submarine and enters the Mediterranean in search of the fabled lost island of Atlantis.