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STEVE BOYD REVIEWS

SEARCHING FOR TERRY PUNCHOUT

Saturday afternoon members of the Bumbleberry Book Club shrugged off their rain jackets while inhaling a warm breath of butter and browning pastry. The scent of cinnamon and baking apples curled unhurried through the café announcing Frannie’s creation.

After hugs and handshakes they milled around a cafe table heaped with a platter of luncheon sandwiches making sure to save room for the pièce de résistance. Each poured a bevvy of choice and slid into the banquette to enjoy the second Canada Reads book review by Steven.

Steve grappled in the pocket of his time-worn leather jacket, finally producing a writing pad that l looked similar to his police notebook. Flipping it open he cleared his throat and began.

‍ ‍Book Report: Searching for Terry Punchout by Tyler Hellard Genre: Fiction. Reviewing Book Club M Member: S. Boyd

‍ ‍ Summary of Events:

Main character: Adam Macallister. He is a young sports journalist who loses his job in Calgary and returns to his small hometown in Nova Scotia. His purpose is to write a feature for Sports Illustrated on the NHL's all-time career penalty minutes leader, known as Terry Punchout, real name: Terry Macallister. He is Adam’s estranged father. Terry sustained an injury that ended his career. He relocated to his hometown and became a reclusive, unpaid Zamboni operator and general maintenance guy who lives for free in the rink building.

Frannie plunked her spiked coffee mug on the table. “Mon dieu, Steve, c’est ridicule! No one lives in a hockey rink.”

“Look, I didn’t write the story – not my idea.”

Checking his notes, he continued in chronological fashion. “Adam, the son, holds impersonal interviews his dad, who he is angry with for leaving Adam’s mom when she was ill. As he hangs around in town, he meets a lot of friends he grew up with and slides into teenage nonsense again, drinking and hanging out with the guys, playing inebriated hockey. A girl from high school who he really liked and is still attracted to, seems to be the only one who has matured. She is a single mom raising a son. Adam briefly attempts to resume a relationship with her. Results: inconclusive—."

“Inconclusive?" Betty cut in, chuckling. “C’mon Steve. Give us a reason to read the book. Did he or did he not score?"

“On the ice or with the girl?" Bella asked mischievously, swirling her wine.

Steve gave her a smirk and a glare that had no effect. It rarely did.

“I'm getting there. Results of hockey attempt: unsatisfying for Adam—he can’t resolve old wounds with his best friend and fights on the ice. Results of reconnecting with girl friend: Shared memories together. He likes her son and imagines what his life would have been like with her, but by the end of the book there’s no indication that they reconnect. Results of being with his father: Memories healing and hurtful surface during their discussions. Father and son begin a process of cautious mutual reconnaissance—

“Cautious mutual what? Brut, did you get that? Sounds like a stakeout." Brut flapped droopy beagle ears in annoyance—either because Henry disturbed his nap or he was trying to dislodge the ridiculous beanie his master had insisted he wear to the meeting.

“My Observations, Steve continued nonplussed at the interruption. “The characters are flawed. They communicate poorly and indirectly, particularly regarding emotional matters. This was painful to read but consistent with my observations of human behaviour. He helped himself to another sandwich. Fuelled for the finish line he continued.

“I liked that the novel was short and didn’t lag along the way. Some down east humor broke up the tension but the emotional breakthrough between father and son toward the end was rather unsatisfactory. I would like to have seen more resolution of their friction. I just didn’t get that part. I can’t imagine being in a strained relationship with any of my family members.

“Steve." He looked up at Betty, outfitted for the occasion in a maritime-themed apron and passing snacks his way. “Are you saying that you wanted more feelings in the book?"

Four pairs of eyes locked in on him as he paused.

“I'm saying the case file was incomplete."

“Well okay. I choose to interpret that you would have preferred emotional closure."

Henry was openly laughing. “Bella, I think Bett’s right. Your boyfriend just admitted he wanted to read about two men processing their feelings."

“I move we read Heated Rivalry as a book club pick for next month," Bella said cheekily.

“Seconded," said Betty.

“What’s that about?” Henry tipped back the last dredge of coffee.

“Henri, vis tu dans une caverne ou quoi?” Frannie gave him an eyeball roll and ran her fingers through her wiry mop. “Check it out on Crave.”

Steve, who had survived as an undercover cop in Toronto and a relocation to policing in the County, accepted his reward of whisky coffee and apple pie with the quiet dignity of a man who knew when he had been outflanked.

Francine (Frannie) Bernier’s Critique

It’s Different This Time

Frannie barrelled into Bella's kitchen, shook the rain off her jacket and hung it on a peg by the back door. She clutched the clutched the paperback book under review in her fist like she was trying to strangle it.

“Maudit livre." She slapped it down on the kitchen counter with a thud that made StinkEye bolt. “Bella, pour me ma ma ma belle, me something to drink. I need fortification.”

Bella obediently splashed something amber from her winery into a teacup. “That bad, Frannie?"

Frannie turned her back to Bella exposing the ‘I'd Rather be Reading a Good Book’ logo on the sweatshirt she one she usually wore during tax season and spring cleaning. Betty whispered conspiratorially to Steve and Bella, “She's wearing the grumpy shirt. This is going to be good."

“Bad? Bad is when a supplier sends me parsley and calls it cilantro. Bad is when Henry forgets Brut's poop bag on a café chair. This—" she jabbed the cover with a flour-dusted finger, “this is something else. This is a travesty for such an honorable contest. Bella. Bella. Sit down. I will explain.”

Steve gave Bella an ‘I’ve got the pizza’ look and then turned his back to his guests with relief to monitor progress in the oven.

Henry, who had been quietly helping himself and Brut to the antipasto delectables on the table, perked up. “Uh oh, Brut, she got her Francophonie accent goin’. I know that tone."

“As it happens, Henry, I am doing ma critique in the tone that reflects my opinions.” Frannie flipped the pages of her book, which Henry noted with dismay was flapping with strips of napkins that opened to text highlighted in three different colors of disapproval.

“Okay folks, take a seat. Pizza is served.” Steve’s rich voice and the smell of a homemade pepperoni and cheese pie settled everyone down momentarily.

But Frannie was too wound up and started her critique. “Câline de bine. How did I get stuck with the only romance book in the lot?” she grumbled. “Ok, let’s get this over with.” She squared her shoulders. “It’sDifferent This Time. Écoutez-moi bien, because I am only telling the story once.”

"Frannie,” Betty counselled, “breathe, take a bite of Steve’s fantastic pizza. Then tell us the premise. Some of us haven't read it."

“Some of us are lucky. There is a young woman, June Wood. She lives in Los Angeles, and has a TV show. The TV show gets cancelled — bon, this part I believe, television is a terrible business, my cousin Marc tried it once, he came home with no money and a divorce. Then she gets an email." Frannie paused dramatically. “An email! About a brownstone. In New York City. In the West Village."

“Is that a nice neighbourhood?" Henry asked innocently.

“Henry, it is the kind of neighbourhood where a closet costs more than our entire café. And the email says that if June and her old roommate Adam move back into this brownstone for one month, they get to keep it—for free. Gratuit. Un cadeau. A multi-million-dollar building, handed over because of a — what did she call it — a ‘legal loophole.' Quelle stupidité!”

Bella blinked. “A legal loophole."

“A legal loophole, ma belle, and the author's wild imagination.”

“So. Off she flies, this June, back to New York, and she moves in with Adam, who she has not spoken to for five years because of some Big Mysterious Reason that the author dangles in front of us for, oh, about two hundred pages going back and forth eleven years ‘till you don’t know what decade they’re in. And what happens for those two hundred pages? Rien. Nothing. They look at each other across rooms. He makes food, she wonders what to do with her life—act off Broadway, go back to Hollywood? She thinks about their friendship and all the unfinished business, unresolved feelings of the past. How can she possibly make it through a month living under the same roof? She is so niaiseuse.” She paused, picking up a piece of pizza in her hand.

“Mm mm, Steve, mon ami. Deliciso.” Frannie downed the slice and swigged her wine. “June Wood. I would like to nominate her for most annoying, insecure, hesitant, literary main female character award. She doesn’t trust Adam but is too immature to confront him and ask him to clarify anything. Every single barrier in this book — every single one — would evaporate if these two people sat down at a kitchen table" — she gestured grandly at Bella's kitchen table — "this kind of kitchen table, with two cups of coffee and twenty minutes of honesty, and said, 'Hello, I have feelings. Do you also have feelings? Wonderful. Let us proceed. ‘Adam, why were you making out with that woman in front of me?’ ‘June, why did you move to LA without telling me?’ Vingt minutes, that is all. Answers given. Communication. Done. Everybody carries on happily with their six-million-dollar inheritance. That's the book. I just saved you three hundred pages."

Bella was laughing into her glass. Betty had her chin propped on her hand, grinning at her partner. Steve added sardonically, “So tell us what you really think Frannie.”

“Bon Dieu, we are supposed to find her standoffishness romantic. We are supposed to read about Adam and sigh and say, ahh, what a complicated soul. No. Non.”

Henry was wheezing. Betty was wiping her eyes.

“And four hundred pages. Four hundred, mes amies. Repetitive, boring. By page two hundred I was begging for a body to drop. Anything. A pigeon. Quelqu'un, please, something has to happen."

“Did anything happen?" Betty asked.

“They eventually kissed and made up. The author wants us to feel that this is a triumph. It is not a triumph. It is a relief. Like when the dentist finally stops drilling." She combed fingers through untameable salt and pepper that crackled with her restless energy.

Bella doubled-over with laughter. “Stop already!”

“I am almost done, ma belle. I am almost done. But I have saved the most regretful sentiment for the end, because I am, after all, a semi-professional reviewer." Frannie set the book down with great ceremony, picked up her glass, and looked each of them in the eye. "This book. This American second-act romance set entirely in Los Angeles and New York City —finds itself in Canada Reads?"

Silence. Even Brut and StinkEye stared at Frannie, waiting for the shoe to drop.

“Canada Reads, mes amis. Our Canada. The country of Margaret Atwood and Pierre Burton, Alice Munro, Michael Ondaatje – you get my gist. And they pick this book, set in Manhattan. Not one Tim Hortons. Not a lake, not a loon, or a moose, not one single character who ever shovelled a driveway. I read the whole thing waiting for a mention of Canada. The closest I got was that June was born in Toronto, which has absolutely no bearing on the story—I think the author added that just to get a shot at Canada Reads.”

“That's grim," said Henry.

“Yes, it is. To be fair, though, the contest rules say that any author born in Canada can have their work nominated. And Joss Richards is a decent writer and lots of folks loved the book. The genre just wasn’t my jam, but Foe and Terry Punchout are still contenders.”

Betty raised her glass solemnly. "A toast, with jam. To Frannie, who suffered so we wouldn't have to, and made us laugh in the telling."

“Santé," said Frannie, clinking her glass against each of theirs in turn." Next time I get to pick the read, mes amies, I am choosing a book with murder in it. A real one. With a body. And a weapon. And a plot."

“To Frannie," Bella echoed.

“To bodies dropping by chapter two," Henry recommended.

“And crimes solved by books’ end,” Steve added.

Bella topped up everyone's glass and reached under the table for Steve’s hand. Outside, the rain kept falling on the vineyard, and inside Bella's warm kitchen, the Bumbleberry Book Club agreed — unanimously, and with feeling — that some books were better than others, but all deserved a chance and an audience.

Bella Stewart Reviews

A Minor Chorus

by Billy-Ray Belcourt

Early April sun slanted through the kitchen windows of Henry's farmhouse, catching the steam rising from a cast-iron skillet where the last omelet was folding itself into creamy, cheesy submission under his ancient spatula. Brut’s beagle barks greeted the guests as he wound through their legs sniffing for an elevenses treat which Frannie slipped him from her cardigan pocket.

The farmhouse had what Betty liked to call "the look" — that particular arrangement of a widowed bachelor's home; it was clean enough but still cluttered with his wife’s bric-a-brac and feminine touches. The kitchen theme was ‘mismatch’. A geranium on the windowsill, a gift from Candace, his granddaughter, had one promising red bud, while the violet’s leaves were grey and crisp. A linen tea towel from the 1988 Calgary Olympics was still in rotation even though Bella had given him a set of kitchen towels for Christmas. On the table waiting for the coffee to finish brewing, were four mismatched, lightly chipped mugs and one good one, which Henry had wordlessly set in front of Bella. After all, she was the esteemed presenter.

"Bread's still warm," Henry said, sliding a board onto the scarred pine table. A dish of pale farm butter, and a jar of Betty's saskatoon jam, it’s handwritten label half-peeled off, surrounded a crusty round loaf that sent up wafts of whole wheat and molasses. "Coffee's strong. If you want it weaker, there's the tap." He plunked the pot on the table.

"Henri, mon vieux romantique, où sont les napperons?" Frannie asked teasingly.

Henry responded testily. “Napperons? Are you inferring I wear diapers?”

Betty giggled. “Napperons are doilies Henry. I’m sure Mary must have used them.”

"Oh, those fussy things. Used ‘em as kindling. Asked Mary for forgiveness after.”

Betty laughed and began buttering bread with the focused energy of a woman who hadn’t been able to enjoy her Sunday sleep-in and needed to be compensated by carbohydrates. Steve, still in his OPP-issue wool sweater from the overnight shift, yawned and lowered himself carefully into a chair hoping it wasn’t the one that wobbled.

"All right, Bella," Steve said, reaching for the coffee pot. "You haven’t put that book for two days. Let's hear it."

Bella held A Minor Chorus by its binding. The pages flipped open naturally to text of interest that she had revisited and studied during the reading. Placing it next to her plate, the cover of the slim paperback curled open. Any book lover would recognize dog-eared folds on specific pages that suggested genuine, engaged reading. She cleared her throat. Frannie loudly whispered, “That’s her board meeting call to attention."

"Okay. So. This is my pitch for the fourth Canada Reads contender. I'll say upfront — it's not our usual. It's not a sport, paranormal or romance story. And sorry, there's no dead body —"

"Dang," Henry muttered.

“Bien sûr.” Frannie agreed.

"— and I'm recommending it anyway. It’s Billy-Ray Belcourt’s first novel but it reads more like an academic autoethnography most of the time.”

Henry put down his fork. “Bella, English please.”

“Hmm, think of it this way," Bella said, reaching for her coffee. “When a writer uses their own life to answer important questions, it is called autoethnography. A fancy word for self-research that starts with an aspect of their own story —memories, family, conversations they've had, interviews— and they use that to tell you something bigger about the sociocultural world they come from."

"So, it's a memoir with thinking involved." Henry said.

"Exactly that. It's memoir that's trying to make a point, not just about the writer, but kind of an insider perspective of situations that outsiders don’t get. For example, Belcourt is a queer, Cree writer brought up by his grandmother in a northern Alberta reservation. He started as a poet and non-fiction writer then completed a master’s degree in women’s studies. His doctoral thesis was called The Conspiracy of Indian Joy. I tell you this so you know his perspective is unique and the book is — honestly— the book is strange."

"Strange how?" Betty asked, mouth full of bread.

"Strange in that it isn't a run of the mill novel. There's a narrator, which sounds like Belcourt himself, who has writer’s block during his PhD dissertation. He takes a break and starts having conversations with people — his aunt, cousins, old classmates, men he meets on Grindr, a closeted childhood acquaintance. Those conversations are the book. It's built like a chorus. Lots of voices, but no central plot."

Steve frowned over the rim of his mug. "No plot. You're selling it beautifully."

"I know how it sounds. Hear me out. The thing is, I came at the book the way I come at everything — I'm a nurse, I like evidence, a question that needs solving, and a reasoned conclusion. So, the first thirty pages I was ready to put it down. The prose is dense. For instance…” Bella checked her notes. He writes sentences like 'To whom or what does the body plead?' and part of me wanted to write 'to its cardiologist' in the margin. But then you close it for awhile and think about your interpretation.”

Frannie snorted coffee.

"But then Aunt Mary calls him, telling him how her grandson Jack got arrested — she heard the whole thing happen over the phone. And Belcourt writes that his body reacted as if he were hearing that kind of story for the first time, even though he'd heard it a hundred times before. Reading that, something shifted for me. Because that's a thing I recognize from the hospital. You see the same kind of tragedy come through the doors over and over, and one day one of them pierces through you like you've never seen it before. He named something I knew but wasn’t able to verbalize."

The kitchen was quieter now. Steve contemplated his coffee.

"I'll say this carefully," he said, "because I know where you're going with that one. I've been on calls I'm not proud to be a cop. I've also been on calls where the version that gets told later bears no resemblance to what happened. Both things are true. Does he do both things, or just the one?"

"Mostly the one," Bella said. "He's writing from inside the community, and he's angry. I think he's earned the anger. But, no matter. All readers can take something from it without having to like every sentence."

"Fair enough."

"Is there any fun in it?" Henry asked, in the tone of a man who had once been handed a Michael Ondaatje novel and never forgave the giver.

"No Henry. There is not what you would call fun."

"I withdraw the question."

"However," Bella said, "unlike Frannie’s review there is emotion, communication. He says writing is a social act. It is a tribute to having been loved and wanting to be less alone. That landed for me. It’s not academic. It’s his truth."

Betty, who had been quietly demolishing a second slice of bread, looked up. "That's lovely, actually."

“Yeah, it is lovely. I sat with that one for a while too."

"At the kitchen table or in the tub?" Frannie asked.

"Tub. With wine. Ask Steve, he came in to top me up.”

They all stared at Steve simultaneously and were rewarded when his ears turned beet red. “Bella, enough now.”

"OK. Moving on. I admit I read some of the book’s critiques. The complaints are real: overwritten, pretentious, self-absorbed narrator. There were no quotation marks around the dialogue, which drove me crazy for twenty pages, then I stopped noticing. Some readers felt the novel was overloaded with social-justice vocabulary that many are getting tired of."

"And?" Steve asked.

"And I think some of that's fair. He does reach for the theoretical word when a plain one would do. But it's a slim book, 179 pages. You close it, sit with it a day or two, and you already know which passages you'll circle back to." Bella riffled the pages with her thumb; a cascade of folded corners flipped past.”

Henry was refilling coffees. "So why Canada Reads? Why pitch it as a book all Canadians should read? "

"Well, I’m thinking this is a real contender. Frannie was complaining about the lack of Canadian content in her book. Well, this one is saturated in it. The author won accolades and scholarships for his writing at an early age—someone for us to be proud of. And the book does change the narrative —between academic writing and fiction, between memoir and novel, between prose and poetry. It brings new conversations into the nation’s kitchens and living rooms. As Belcourt says, a book doesn't have to change the world, but it can mark the wanting, the longing, for something better.”

A pause. The woodstove ticked. Steve cut himself another slice of bread with the deliberation of a man thinking.

"All right, I’m convinced" he said finally. "I'll read it. But if I hate it, I may smother you all with true crime with my next pick."

"Deal.”

Betty proposed, "I vote Frannie and I listen to the audiobook. It’s free and invisible, so it won’t clutter up our bookshelf.

" Une super idée, Papillion!" Frannie said. "Henri?"

"I am not reading it."

"Henry."

"Fine. I'll read the first chapter. If there's a farm in it like my last one, I'll keep going."

"There is no farm in it, Henry."

"Then I'll still read the first chapter. If it wins the contest, I might finish it."

Out the window, a ragged V of geese honked their arrival to the County. Inside, Betty and Frannie were fighting for the last slice of Henry’s homemade bread. The coffee was strong and the Baileys chaser mellowed out the friends. Brut’s ears were twitching as he snoozed on Betty’s canvas bag, which held the final book contender, The Cure for Drowning. Perhaps spring fairies were singing him a lullaby.

Betty Quinn Reviews

The Cure for Drowning

By Loghan Paylor

The sidewalk outside the Bumbleberry Café door was decorated with broom patterns. Any way to sweep the dusty, salty remnants of winter was welcome. Even the tinkling of the bell when Bella and Steve opened the café door sounded lighter, cheery. A cross breeze from the open back door carried an aroma of soup from the kitchen straight to Steve’s stomach. It rumbled in anticipation as he hung both their jackets up. The chalkboard menu had been wiped clean of the winter’s root-vegetable stews and rewritten in looping green chalk: Spring Pea & Mint Soup. Asparagus Tart. Rhubarb Delite.

“Do you think that’s on the menu for our book club meeting?” Steve asked Bella hopefully.

Henry overhead the question from the banquette "Frannie, you've gone and got us all hopeful with that food billboard of yours.” Henry was adjusting himself into the corner with Brut riding in his over the shoulder sling. "We goin’ to be the guinea pigs for your new spring dishes? No more tourtière?"

“The tourtière is stored with the winter parkas, Henry.” This season its tarts and tortes.”

Steve slid into the booth. “Tart as in asparagus tart, Frannie? Sounds delish.”

“All right, mes amis, I see you brought your appetites to the book club. You can start with the soup and these.” She set down bowls of pea and mint soup and planted a basket of warm scones between them. “Papillion, you must wait. My soup will be your reward for revealing this story to us.”

“Ok. I’m up and excited! This one’s the winner. No doubt.” Betty straightened her apron, drawing attention to the Disney-like flowers and fairies fluttering about her curves. Sitting at the head of the banquette, she placed the novel beside her plate with genuine affection. “The Cure for Drowning has everything you could possibly hope for in a story: Irish folklore, changelings, gender conundrums, passion and romance, class distinctions, family feuds and reconciliations, social disruptions of war, action, courage, and finally, a satisfactory ending for a change.”

“Whoa! That’s a lot of topics to stuff into a tale, Bett.” Henry wiped unattractive drops of green soup off his chin. “Makes my Foe sound unidimensional.”

“About that,” Betty resumed, “as a first novelist, Loghan Paylor, a Canadian from BC, is a top-notch writer. The way they write about the settings of the story is descriptive, not wordy with flowery adjectives, but evocative. Love and sexual desire is described by the minutiae of the relationship, not graphic sexual acts. I like that – they make you visualize and feel where the characters are at a point in time what the do. That’s important because the time frame spans 1931 – 1947.”

Steve perked up. “So wartime Canada? I enjoy reading historical accounts like that.”

“Well, don’t get excited. This is not one of those non-fiction books on the analytical, strategic overview of combat. It tackles the hidden issues of homosexuals in the forces, the emotional and social impacts of sending our loved-ones to war and not having them return, or sometime worse, having them return unexpectedly.”

“Got it. I may pass on this one.”

“Well, you may want to reconsider, ‘cuz I decided we are so close to the Canada Reads debates, I am not going to spoil it by telling the whole story.” Betty dramatically looked at each of them. “I will give you the beginning that introduces the main characters, then see if you can resist.”

Taking a minute for sustenance, Betty delicately quartered a scone and spread it with butter.

“So. The story opens with a scene that stopped me cold. A ten-year-old girl walks into the forest with her two brothers on the worst Ontario winter afternoon of 1931 — and she does not come out again. She falls through the river ice. She drowns. Her brothers bring her frozen body home. But her mother, Caroline, refuses to let her go. She says her Gaelic prayers over her, and she uses what the book calls Celtic magic — the old ways, the ones you bring with you across the ocean in your pocket — and after three days the child wakes up."

“Three days," Bella murmured, and glanced at Steve. Steve raised an eyebrow a quarter of an inch, which was Steve for yes, I noticed too. Both were mentally scrolling through logical explanations. Hypothermia slows metabolism, a hypothermic is not pronounced dead until they are warm and dead… Then another narrative surprise.

“But," Betty said, lifting a finger, “she wakes up changed. The family calls her a changeling. Her name was Kathleen before. Then she becomes Kit. And Kit is — well, Kit does not fit the farm-girl life her parents expected of her. Kit wears her brother’s clothes, does boys' farm chores, race trains on horseback. Her poor mother is beside herself."

“Sounds like your stories at twelve," Frannie said.

“I was a tomboy, Frannie. I was not a changeling."

“Are we sure?"

“Frannie."

Steve spoke up behind his coffee: "Can confirm Betty is not an Irish fae. I signed her passport."

Betty swatted at him with her napkin. She took a breath and went on.

“Now here's what I loved. The McNair family has this origin story they tell — that their great-great-grandfather fell in love with a selkie. You know selkies, Bella? Seal women, in the Irish stories. They come ashore and shed their sealskin and walk among us, and if you love one you have to let her go back to the sea eventually, or the salt in her blood will ruin you. And Paylor uses that story like a — like a thread running through the whole book. The shedding of the skin. Becoming who you really are underneath. It's woven right into Kit's whole journey."

“That's lovely, actually," Bella said.

“It is lovely. Now. Flash forward to April 1939. War's coming. A new family moves to town — the Kromers. German-Canadian, which is not a comfortable thing to be in small-town Ontario in 1939. The father's a doctor. The daughter is Rebekah, and she is elegant, and the minute she lays eyes on Kit — who by now is nineteen — she knows exactly who Kit is. No confusion. No fuss. Just — I see you. And the two of them fall into each other."

“Ah," said Frannie, who was a romantic under all the sarcasm.

“But," Betty said, “Kit has an older brother. Landon. And Landon wants Rebekah too. And so you've got your love triangle — and Paylor is smart enough to know it was never an equal triangle. The real current is always between Kit and Rebekah and that’s the way the story unfolds, alternating between Kit's and Rebekah's voices — both of them beautifully distinct.” And then the war breaks everything apart. Landon joins the Navy, and Kit —"

She paused for dramatic effect.

“— Kit steals an army uniform and identification papers of a boy on a train, walks into a Royal Air Force recruiting office as Christopher McNair, and becomes a bomber navigator."

“Mon Dieu," Frannie said.

“Now that," Henry said, "is a way to leave the farm.”

“And here," Betty said," is where I have to tell you about the magic. Because this is not a ghost story. It's not fantasy. But there is a shimmer over the whole tale — a sense that Kit is protected somehow. That ancient Celtic ways are still working in the background. I had shivers, honestly. I had to put the book down twice and just sit with my tea."

“Tea, Betty?”

“Well, Henry’s version of tea. Need a splash of whisky to get rid of the chills, eh?”

Betty gathered herself. “The war changes everything and there are shocking turns of events. I am not going to spoil it for you because you all need to read it yourselves. But I will say this. The ending is poetic. It is hard-earned. And love does triumph — but not in the tidy way you expect."

She closed the book. “It's called The Cure for Drowning because Kit drowned as a child, and was brought back by magic. But the real cure for drowning in this story is being seen. Being loved as who you are and not who the world tried to make you. Which — if you ask me — is what all the best books are really about."

There was a small, respectful quiet.

Bella broke it, softly: “Betty, that was beautiful."

“I told you she'd been carrying that book like a precious." Frannie’s voice had gone gentle.

Henry cleared his throat. “So this Kit. This Kit's got a bit of changeling. Selkie. All of that."

"Yes, Henry."

“And you — you, who consults the horoscopes before you pick a new apron —"

"Henry, I do not consult my horoscope about aprons —"

“— you felt a kinship with this book."

“I felt a kinship with this book."

Henry nodded slowly, with the air of a man arriving at a grave verdict. “Well. I'm convinced. Betty, you're a selkie."

“Henry…"

“It explains a lot. The hair, your curviness. The way you know when it's going to rain. You like swinning in the summer."

“Henry."

“Don't worry. Your secret's safe at this table." He glanced at his comrades. "Right, Brut?"

Brut roused himself and gently nibbled the offered bribe, a piece of scone: “See, Brut won’t give you up Betty."

“Arrête, arrête, arête. Frannie said laughingly “Betty, put me down as the first to borrow the book. Today. Put me down for it."

“Me too," said Bella.

“Put me down as well, but no rush. I’ll settle for a summer read.” said Steve, which was the best affirmation Betty could get.

Henry raised his coffee cup. "To Betty's choice. And to all the changelings and magic at this table, especially Frannie’s kitchen magic—don’t forget the rhubarb delight Fran, it’s on the menu."

Outside, the April wind was working on the last of winter, and inside, a mason jar of pussy willows and tulips sat on their table. The breeze flowing through the Bumbleberry Café was filled with possibility. Betty slid the novel carefully back into her bag. She would lend it to Bella first. She’d get through it neatly and appreciate the quiet parts. Frannie would understand.

And Canada Reads could take care of itself. Betty already knew which book had her vote.