PUBLISHED By CUSTOM BOOK PUBLICATIONS PREMIUM CLASSIC imprint A writer ponders a photograph taken in a Yorkshire garden in the early 1890s of his maternal great-grandparents and their seven children. His mother gave it to him when he was a boy and told him his ancestors' names. Since those seven had only four offspring and so much time has passed, he realizes he is likely the last person alive who can identify those in the picture. The few extant records show the family patriarch was a Methodist minister and that his eldest son followed in his footsteps. Another son became the writer's grandfather whose troubled relationship with his daughter failed to erase her fidelity to the collective past. Faced with a sense of obligation to his mother's loyalty and scant historical evidence, the writer attempts to meet his vanished relations the only way he knows how - by writing them down. Who were his great-grandparents, Thomas and Elizabeth, and great-uncles and great-aunt - Ernest, Bertram, Horace, Arthur, Norman, and Letitia - as well as his grandfather Clement. What might have been the personal stories of consequence they did not visibly leave behind? ... ... By the Same Author Confronted by his own mortality and that of his paintings, artist Ben Sand reproduces several modern masterpieces on the walls of an isolated French cave so they will last for 20,000 years. His efforts are mirrored by those of a Paleolithic girl, An, who, in her own cave, reveals through stroke and colour the physical violence and spiritual depths of her pre-historic environment. An's visions and techniques are directly described, while the essence of Sand's endeavours is found in compelling stories that emerge from landscape and human presence within paintings by Bruegel, Goya, Monet, and others. The result is enduring images of visual brilliance framed by lived experience that has its own place and longevity in time. The LAST ARTIST ..
Author Biography:
About the Author J.A. Wainwright was born in Toronto, Canada. Since 1972 he has lived in Halifax, Nova Scotia where he is McCulloch Emeritus Professor in English at Dalhousie University. His areas of specialization were contemporary and Canadian literature and popular culture, including a class on Bob Dylan and literature of the 1960s. His first novel, A Deathful Ridge: a Novel of Everest, was shortlisted for the Boardman-Tasker Prize in Mountain Literature in 1997, and his biography of painter Robert Markle, Blazing Figures, was shortlisted for the ForeWord Magazine Literary Prize in the U.S. in 2010. He has given readings from his fiction and poetry collections in Canada, the U.S.A and Europe. Poetry Publications: Moving Outward, Toronto: New Press, 1970 The Requiem Journals, Fredericton: Fiddlehead Books, 1976 After the War, Oakville, Mosaic Press, 1981 Flight of the Falcon: Scott's Journey to the South Pole, Mosaic Press, 1987 Landscape and Desire: Selected Poems, Mosaic Press, 1992 Fiction Publications: A Deathful Ridge: a Novel of Everest, Mosaic Press, 1997 A Far Time, Mosaic Press, 2001 The Confluence, Mosaic Press, 2007 Biographies: Charles Bruce: World Enough and Time, Formac Publishing, 1988 Blazing Figures: A Life of Robert Markle, Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 2010
