Bøker av Valerie Mills-Milde

On a bright November day in 1913, a young deckman named Harry Darling joins The James Carruthers, a large cargo carrier leaving Port William and bound for Midland on her last cargo run of the season. Harry's estranged father, Connor Darling, is onshore, unaware of Harry's whereabouts and consumed with staving off the end of his failing mink farm. When a cyclonic weather event descends over the entire region, Harry and Connor reconsider perceptions of past transgressions, and with the help of a telegraph operator named Flo, each navigates the shoals of loss and betrayal, and searches for an idea of home.Told from the perspectives of Harry, Connor, and Flo, The Current Between is a terrifying fictional account of those caught in the Great Storm of 1913, the most devastating marine disaster in the history of the Great Lakes."Mills-Milde brilliantly recreates the early twentieth century in Southern Ontario. The novel's portrayal of the final hours on board a doomed lake freighter is truly one of the most vivid and terrifying accounts of the greatest disaster to befall the inland lakes ever written."David Yates, historian and author of Out of the Woods, and The Time of our Lives."Readers will find themselves pulled under by narrative currents that connect characters and waterways in an ongoing and often stormy cycle of renewal and regeneration. In this strangely charged place,where land and water meet, we witness both the fragility of human endeavor and the strengthand power of relationships-between and among humans, animals, and the places they callhome."Tom Cull, former Poet Laureate of London, Ontario, and author of Bad Animals and Kill YourStarlings.This is historical fiction at its best-alive to the complexities of people and events, and compulsivelyreadable. Aaron Schneider author of What We Think We Know and Grass-Fed

It is The War to End All Wars, and Ena Connelly, a keenly sensory and extraordinary woman, is newly married and living on an Ontario farm. The shock of violence in far-off battlefields is echoed in a terror much closer to hand. With bold perception and remarkable self-reliance, Ena faces a dramatically altered world. Ena is self-contained, and careful not to reach too far into the turbulent emotional lives of others. As the war progresses, Ena forms a fierce bond of loyalty for Blain, the delightful but (necessarily) duplicitous boy who comes to work for her. Through Blain, she learns to extend herself in unexpected ways-- to reach outside of herself, and to risk. Ena also grows closer to her sister-in-law, Sarah, a gifted painter. Sarah is unafraid of confronting emotional turmoil and passion but she doesn't have Ena's absolute clarity of purpose and aim. Ena helps Sarah move closer to the life she wants, while Sarah opens Ena to a terrible and essential kind of beauty. When studying Sarah's paintings, Ena comments that it is not the surface that matters, but rather what is underneath. The same is true of this novel -- underneath the meticulous detail of daily life is the emotional landscape of persistent, courageous women, watching the violence of war in Europe (World War I) and domestic violence closer to home.