What is real when seen through the eyes of a child? When does the harshness of reality transform idyllic memories? The young narrator of Santa Rosa seeks the answers to these questions as she tries to make sense of the disintegration of her parents' marriage—a process echoed by the slow disintegration of their neighborhood.

In subtle poetic prose, Wendy McGrath evokes afternoons at the fair captured in overexposed photographs and a family's disquieting day at the beach as moments that exist apart from time, in a place where every sense is heightened, and where every memory is sharpened as if in a lucid dream where understanding lies just beyond reach.

Wendy McGrath was born in Prince Albert, Saskatchewan. Her poetry and short fiction has been published in numerous publications. Her previous novel, Recurring Fictions, was released through the University of Alberta Press in 2002.

A volume of poignant recollections by one of Canada's most celebrated poets, Small Beneath the Sky is a tender, unsparing portrait of a family and a place.

Lorna Crozier vividly depicts her hometown of Swift Current, with its one main street, two high schools, and three beer parlors—where her father spent most of his evenings. She writes unflinchingly about the grief and shame caused by poverty and alcoholism. At the heart of the book is Crozier's fierce love for her mother, Peggy. The narratives of daily life—sometimes funny, sometimes heartbreaking —are interspersed with prose poems. Lorna Crozier approaches the past with a tactile sense of discovery, tracing her beginnings with a poet's precision and an open heart.

Anna Silowski, highly-educated, driven and successful, works as a curator in a prestigious paleontological museum; Scott Macleod dropped out of school, has a confused relationship with his native roots, and an alcoholic father in tow. She, it seems, is at the top of her game; he does not even know what his might be. A day's prospecting leads Anna to make an extraordinary discovery in the remote part of BC where Scott lives. As the tensions below the surface of her successful career are exposed, Anna, who has for years carried terrifying knowledge that she feels she must keep secret 'almost from herself', is pushed toward breakdown. She finds herself unexpectedly dependent on Scott; recruited to help on the excavation she is heading, he is soon way out of his depth. The excavation itself teeters on the edge of disaster. What can be salvaged? Has Anna used Scott? Will he abandon her? What is the nature of the bond between them?

Retired schoolteacher Flossy O'Reilly feels the whisper of death at her back. It is in her home in Great Village, Nova Scotia where she is surrounded by piles of books. It is beside her as she gazes out over the shore with her lifelong friend Mealie. It walks with her into the village, while details of the distant past return to her with startling clarity. With worsening chest pains, exacerbated by the arrival of an unwelcome teenager, she fully expects her life is ebbing away. She must finally confront the deceptions and shame of the long-hidden past.

Mary Rose Donnelly is a journalist, editor, and full-time gardener. Like Flossy O'Reilly, she counts Virginia Woolf, Elizabeth Bishop, and William Shakespeare among her favourite authors. She has lived in France and Peru, but calls Canada home. In 1992 she published Katharine: A Biography of Dr. Katharine Boehner Hockin. Great Village is her first novel.