Greenwood

Greenwood

By Michael Christie

 

It’s 1974 and Willow Greenwood is living in her Westfalia, travelling to various logging camps with her son, Liam, in tow.  Willow’s intent is to sabotage logging operations and generally interfere with the industry that is destroying B.C.’s vast and beautiful forests.  In fact, she has devoted her life to this endeavour.

Unexpectedly, Willow is the daughter of Harris Greenwood, a rich lumber magnate who lives in a mansion in Shaughnessy.  As we delve into Willow’s history, Michael Christie takes us on an elaborate journey across Canada and right through the 20^th century.

Willow’s roots (pun intended) go back to a maple farm in New Brunswick where, in 1934, she is found as a newborn who’s been left to die in a tree.  Everett Greenwood, a drifter (and Harris’s brother), temporarily adopts her and sets out to find her a good home.  He and Willow jump on freight trains and find food wherever they can.  But as they journey through the forests of Quebec (where Willow is almost adopted by a grieving young couple) and the dust bowl of Saskatchewan (where Everett finds temporary work) towards B.C., Everett becomes progressively more attached to Willow and does not want to give her up.

Everett’s story is utterly compelling.  Throughout his journey, we meet a series of other characters, each with stories of their own.  Michael Christie takes readers back to 1908, when Everett and Harris were boys, then fast forwards all the way to 2038 when Jake Greenwood, Willow’s granddaughter, is a forest guide on Greenwood Island, one of the last stands of old growth forest left in the world.

I absolutely loved this epic family tale!  Although not always entirely believable (how do you jump onto a moving train with a baby strapped to you anyway?) I could not put this book down.  Michael Christie has a way of weaving an elaborate and intricate tale that combines multiple layers, threads, characters and time periods. 

He also delves into the fascinating science of trees and likens the inner workings of the forest to that of a family.  Jake Greenwood knows “[t]hat even the impenetrable mysteries of time and family and death can be solved, if only they are viewed through the green-tinted lens of this one gloriously complex organism.”

Highly recommended!

 

 

Vi

by Kim Thuy

Vi by Kim Thúy is this year’s choice for One eRead Canada, a national eBook reading event which runs from January 1 - 31^st. The title character Vi, the youngest of four children and the only girl, narrates this moving story of a Vietnamese family over several decades of the 20^th century. The political climate is changing and two of Vi’s brothers are about to be sent to war, and certain death. Her mother decides that the family must escape the Vietnam conflict. Vi’s father, a soft, spoilt man from a wealthy family, decides to stay behind.

Vi’s family hires smugglers to take them by boat to Malaysia and are lucky to arrive without encountering storms or pirates, but two other boats containing their friends are not as fortunate. In the refugee camp, the family is selected to be part of the first wave of Vietnamese immigrants allowed into Canada.

They arrive in Montreal in the middle of a heat wave, wearing warm clothes they had purchased in anticipation of cold weather. Vi’s mother finds a job washing dishes in a local restaurant and Vi’s older brother, Long, works in a Japanese restaurant while going to business school. Thanks to a worldly family friend and her diplomat husband, Vi is given the opportunity to see the world from a different perspective than her brothers. She decides to study translation and eventually becomes a lawyer and returns to Vietnam.

 Thúy’s writing is spare, vivid, and beautifully poetic, evoking the languid heat of Vietnam, and the icy cold of the Canadian winters they eventually encounter. Despite running only 130 pages, so much happens to Vi and her family members that the book has the sweep of a historical novel. Its themes encompass not only the refugee experience, but also complex relationships and the enduring strength of women.

Dinise Sizer is a librarian at Richmond Public Library. find more great reads here.

 

An Irish Country Family

      By Patrick Taylor

With the current pandemic keeping us apart from those we love, I am finding it important to connect in other ways. My reading choices of late seek comfort and escape and this has led me back to old friends, Doctor Fingal Flaherty O’Reilly, and Dr. Barry Laverty, GPs of the Irish village of Ballybucklebo. Irish born Canadian author, Patrick Taylor, brings the village to life in his Irish Country Series that is set in the 1960’s, a time of some incredible medical breakthroughs, and some political upheaval.

 My current read in the series is An Irish Country Family which, although set in 1969, contains the perfect story line for today’s times.  This chapter in the lives of the Ballybucklebo residents shows how a small village takes care of its own at a time when Northern Ireland is being torn apart by the tumultuous riots that began the 30 year “troubles.”

 While Taylor weaves in the violence, it is always just on the periphery and our little village demonstrates how the conflict does not affect how they live their daily lives. The village comes together to rebuild a family home that was destroyed by fire, to raise funds for children to attend a new camp, and to help each other in times of illness, with Protestants and Catholics, Loyalists and Republicans each working side by side to shore up the village family.

 This volume (#14) is particularly poignant as it travels back in time to Dr. Barry Laverty’s medical student days. He is beginning to practice at the Royal Hospital, where he rotates through different wards to help him decide where he wants to focus his medicine. In his work, Laverty meets many patients and fellow physicians who become friends and help steer him towards his preferred specialty.  Barry dislikes the practice of referring to patients by their affliction, rather than their name. Barry believes that each patient deserves to be treated with care and compassion, a feeling that leads him to join the general practice in Ballybucklebo. 

 The bonds of family, friends and general human kindness resonate through Ballybucklebo, and give the series the warm fuzzies we are looking for in this time of separation. It reminds us that collectively we are stronger and shows us the importance of neighbourly love and support in times of strife.