Bookworms looking to turn a few pages on the beach - or, in this weather, on the couch - this summer can check out several books published recently by current and former Tri-City residents.
Author Debbie Maddigan, who used to call Coquitlam home, is out with a biography about Laura Gilbert, a past Coquitlam and Port Coquitlam resident. Her work, called a little girl called Squeaks, describes Gilbert's childhood in Vancouver's downtown eastside with a drug-addicted mother and talks about her determination to make a better life for her children. The "story of hope" is published by AuthorHouse.
Michelle Mulder, who grew up in Port Moody, has another juvenile novel in print. Out of the Box is her latest offering from Orca Book Publishers; her previous works include Yeny and the Children for Peace, which was a starred selection in the Canadian Children's Book Centre's Best Books for Kids and Teens 2009, and After Peaches, a nominee last year for the Bolen Books' Children's Book Prize.
PoCo's Liesl Jurock has a short story in the new Chicken Soup for the Soul: New Moms edition. Her work, titled Six Days In, is one of 101 "inspirational stories of joy, love and wonder," and speaks about her experience with her son, Lucas, and having to leave their apartment during a fire alarm - six days after she delivered him via C-section.
Last year, Coquitlam's Gisela Woldenga self-published her first novel, The Destiny of Dreams, about a man and a woman who dream about each other and, through a coincidental meeting, find out they were ill-fated lovers thousands of years ago when the Pharaohs ruled. Her latest book of fiction, called Broken Strings, published by Romance at Heart in March, revolves around symphony conductor Daniel Abogado, who is threatened after he hires cellist Elvira Torres.
Cheryl Angst, a Grade 6 and 7 Minnekhada middle teacher in PoCo, launched her science-fiction book, The Firestorm Conspiracy, at the school in May. In the Amazon.com review, the plot is cryptically encapsulated as: "One conspiracy. Two reluctant heroes. A meeting that will alter the fate of billions of lives."
And Port Moody artist Zeynep Dogu Cameron (www.plusonephotography.com) has developed a customized children's book that can follow a young child travelling the world in search of a favourite toy gone missing. The protagonist is interchangeable, given the reader.
Meanwhile, Florida-based writer Janet A. Nicolet (www.myvintageyears.com) has published Long Journey Westward about an Irish family that settles in Coquitlam's Fraser Mills at the turn of the last century. Nicolet visited Maillardville and toured the former site - once the largest sawmill in the Commonwealth and now owned by The Beedie Group - as part of her research.
jwarren@tricictynews.com
