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Showing posts with label Canada. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Canada. Show all posts
Country Out of Crisis - Amazon Kindle store
Strength Within: The Granger Chronicles
Strength Within: The Granger Chronicles
On Stephen Granger's first day on the job at Conroy Manufacturing Company in St. Catharines, Ontario, he was met by a group of workers with baseball bats. They were ready to lay a beating on him because Stephen was a Yankee coming into Canada to take away a job. In September 1937, during the throes of the Great Depression, jobs were scarce and fiercely protected. So begins The Granger Chronicles, the saga of an extraordinary family spanning over 100 years and centred in rural Hungary, Buffalo New York and St. Catharines. Interweaving tales of Granger family secrets and adventures with social history and world events, this book provides a vivid, first-hand view of life during one of history's most dynamic eras: the 19th and 20th centuries.
What prompted the Grangers in 1905 to flee rural Hungary and follow the siren call of “American fever”? What was it like to be a “twenty-something” woman in the flapper era, as Mary McSorley Granger was? Or to ride the rails across America in the 1870s as Mary's father Richard McSorley did at age 11?
The Granger Chronicles brings to life the people, places and times that shaped both the Granger family and North American society overall.
By the Hob
By the Hob
Michael Kevin Dooley, Irish born and bred, came to Canada in 1977 after 11 years at sea and living in Great Britain, Australia and South Africa. A work life as a Machinist and Marine Engineer followed, including service in the Coast Guard until a work injury ended it. Writing, long an avocation with many stories and novels written by hand, is now his vocation. Although ending formal education at age 15, Kevin has read extensively, travelled widely and knows his way around a library.
Kevin is also a fluent Gaelic speaker and a gifted musician on several world stages -- and Ottawa Valley Ceilis. The story of common men and women struggling to realize their dreams and surmount adversities to reach beyond them, drives this writer. Having had a hard row to hoe himself, Dooley's characters are reality-based with no pulled punches. His women, singly and in groups, in all their variety, are almost real to the touch.
His characters are driven by their situations and their situations are tough and very real. Patrick and Mary weave their often separate ways through unspeakable circumstances and social conditions throughout the sea-ports of the world. Both carry the daemons of a poor Irish upbringing, yet ferociously oppose the injustices and cruelty they find blocking their every step towards surviving with a family in an uncaring world. Dooley's style is melodic, understated at times, yet seduces the reader further and further into the dark tributaries of this couples life journey. Patrick's almost surreal experiences counterpoint Mary's down-to-earth methods of problem solving. “The themes and settings are recognizable in Heritage and history, much of it involved in the Hibernian (Irish) world and in the Diaspora. The writing is fast- paced, intense and compelling. This is a great read for those who enjoy a good hard dose of reality with their fiction!” Mike Heenan, Ottawa Editor & Poet
THE ANGIRA LEGACY AND THE CATALYST
THE ANGIRA LEGACY AND THE CATALYST
In these the second and third book of The Angira Trilogy we meet the people of the Angirish Diaspora. Angira is a fictional but recognizable Celtic island, home to crofters and miners, rough traditional and poor on the surface, rich, complex and ancient to those who know her. Countless working men and women have left Angira and live all over the world, in search of new lives. They often find life is hard, harsh and more complicated than they bargained for. Too often their lives are caught up in stories bigger than they are, over which they have no control. Power struggles great and small, stories and legacies generations long, suffering on a soul level yet shared by all of Angirish blood, mark their lives forever. Enter charismatic, passionate characters such as Patrick McKee, protagonist of the second book, The Angira Legacy. A task is given him as part of his inheritance from the mysterious Rosaleen McKee, to see memorials put up on the island, which seems simple enough until Patrick is drawn into the complex web of island life and its myriad connections, economic and political, to the modern world. The setting is recognizable yet politically different from our own world. We begin to see clearly the moral bankruptcy of the rich and, in opposition to it, the power of those who might seem powerless. Dooley’s stories deal in such contradictions and fashion them into tight, recurring Celtic knots, which draw the reader in to weave and reweave. In the third and final book, The Catalyst, we meet the catalyst himself: a never named narrator in the first person. He is an orphan who travels the world, driven to use a charismatic power he recognizes but cannot control. Wherever he goes – Australia, prison, Africa, the sea, French Canada – he is the relentless epicenter of both local and world events. Both stories take the reader around the world with the people of the Celtic Diaspora and deep into their lives and struggles.
393 pages
In these the second and third book of The Angira Trilogy we meet the people of the Angirish Diaspora. Angira is a fictional but recognizable Celtic island, home to crofters and miners, rough traditional and poor on the surface, rich, complex and ancient to those who know her. Countless working men and women have left Angira and live all over the world, in search of new lives. They often find life is hard, harsh and more complicated than they bargained for. Too often their lives are caught up in stories bigger than they are, over which they have no control. Power struggles great and small, stories and legacies generations long, suffering on a soul level yet shared by all of Angirish blood, mark their lives forever. Enter charismatic, passionate characters such as Patrick McKee, protagonist of the second book, The Angira Legacy. A task is given him as part of his inheritance from the mysterious Rosaleen McKee, to see memorials put up on the island, which seems simple enough until Patrick is drawn into the complex web of island life and its myriad connections, economic and political, to the modern world. The setting is recognizable yet politically different from our own world. We begin to see clearly the moral bankruptcy of the rich and, in opposition to it, the power of those who might seem powerless. Dooley’s stories deal in such contradictions and fashion them into tight, recurring Celtic knots, which draw the reader in to weave and reweave. In the third and final book, The Catalyst, we meet the catalyst himself: a never named narrator in the first person. He is an orphan who travels the world, driven to use a charismatic power he recognizes but cannot control. Wherever he goes – Australia, prison, Africa, the sea, French Canada – he is the relentless epicenter of both local and world events. Both stories take the reader around the world with the people of the Celtic Diaspora and deep into their lives and struggles.
393 pages
FINAL FLIGHT FROM SANAA
FINAL FLIGHT FROM SANAA
When Tariq Hakim introduced himself to Colin Lawler one night in a quiet pub, he had no idea that this simple gesture would eventually lead him to imprisonment in his homeland of Yemen. Lawler, a lawyer, has a Libyan client who wishes to deliver much-needed medical equipment to Yemen. Hakim, a doctor who speaks the language and knows the culture, seems a perfect match to facilitate the transaction. However, while in Yemen, a favour to an old friend finds him breaking centuries-old social taboos as he is faced with the dilemma of reconciling his responsibilities to a female patient and respecting the culture and people of his youth. He endures torture at the hands of one his own medical students. But a one night of passion whith a beautiful Danish women leads to rescue, while a coup d'etat is being planned.
The author Qais Ghanem was born in the British colony of Aden, later part of Yemen. He graduated in medicine from the University of Edinburgh. He is clinical associate professor at the University of Ottawa.
When Tariq Hakim introduced himself to Colin Lawler one night in a quiet pub, he had no idea that this simple gesture would eventually lead him to imprisonment in his homeland of Yemen. Lawler, a lawyer, has a Libyan client who wishes to deliver much-needed medical equipment to Yemen. Hakim, a doctor who speaks the language and knows the culture, seems a perfect match to facilitate the transaction. However, while in Yemen, a favour to an old friend finds him breaking centuries-old social taboos as he is faced with the dilemma of reconciling his responsibilities to a female patient and respecting the culture and people of his youth. He endures torture at the hands of one his own medical students. But a one night of passion whith a beautiful Danish women leads to rescue, while a coup d'etat is being planned.
The author Qais Ghanem was born in the British colony of Aden, later part of Yemen. He graduated in medicine from the University of Edinburgh. He is clinical associate professor at the University of Ottawa.
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