Book description
A bartender who discovers magic on a winter night, a pair of losers
taking a baking class, and a middle-aged woman who goes on a wild limo
ride with the ghost of John Diefenbaker These are a few of the amazing
array of characters who live in, or near, Sharon MacFarlanes fictional
village of Palliser, a community struggling to survive in an age of
rural depopulation.
Whether its a terrifying drive on a frozen river ("Ice
Road") or a cancelled trip ("We Didn't Go to Len's This
Summer"), each of the stories in Driving off the Map
takes us, with a character, on a journey toward epiphany.
MacFarlane understands these people, and she tells their secrets with
humour and compassion. Her prose is as unadorned, yet as teeming with
hidden life and beauty, as the prairie she evokes.
"Touching and understated mediations on morality that say what
they need to say without overstaying their welcome. Here again
MacFarlane earns extra credit for saying so much through her
self-imposed restrictions." Sharon MacFarlane's work has appeared
in several periodicals, including Grain, CV2, and Canadian Forum, as
well as in such anthologies as Under NeWest Eyes and Sky High. Her
stories have received awards from the Saskatchewan Writers Guild and
have been broadcast on CBC Radio. Sharon lives with her husband on a
farm near Beechy, Saskatchewan.
