Book description
People cannot readily be categorized, nor some books. Second
Rising is one of them. In her publishing debut, Canadian fiction
writer Catherine Wiebe is as refreshing as she is startling with this
fictional memoir of birthing and memory, a chronicle of food prepared,
bread baked, and human skin bringing first experience of the world.
Who knew that a grandmother kneaded sorrow into each loaf of bread she
baked, or that her memories were preserved along with the pickles she
and her granddaughter made?
Wiebe instinctively knows that preparing food for someone we love is
the most intimate act of all, making something that will not only be
taken into the mouth and be transformed into flesh, but will linger in
memory as well.
Wiebe writes prose as if it were poetry, sharp and clear, touching
the mind and stirring the heart while awakening long-forgotten truths.
Second Rising is the afterlife of food, the memory of what
was, once its reality has gone.
Catherine M. A. Wiebe, a recent graduate in arts and science from
McMaster University, and her husband Tim live in Hamilton, Ontario.
She has worked as an editor, graphic designer, construction site
supervisor, teaching assistant, and bookkeeper.
Wiebe's enthusiasm for wholesome food and new recipes parallels her
freshness in creative writing - the mixture that is never the same,
worked with artistic knowledge of how to combine ingredients in ways
that startle freedom to life.
"It is a pleasure to recommend a literary work that, while it
may take much of its energy from food, is really near poetry in the
new mode of Javier Marias and in James Joyce's opening about infancy
in Portrait of an Artist. Welcome to a fine new
writer."
Barbara Kafka, American author of
award-winning cookbooks, including Vegetable Love and Party Food
CATHERINE M. A. WIEBE was born in the town of Simcoe, Ontario, and
now lives, writes, and tries to recreate her grandmothers' food in
Hamilton. She is a recent graduate of the Arts and Science Program at
McMaster University, and has been writing (with a few other jobs on the
side) since before her graduation. She is married to Tim, and they live
in a little brick cottage with a yellow door and a fledgling garden
outside.
