The Read Local BC’s Bestseller list highlights the titles of independent, B.C.-owned publishers sold in independent B.C. bookstores. Discover a few of their picks for the month of February:
As a Gitxsan teenager navigating life on the streets, Angela Sterritt wrote in her journal to help her survive and find her place in the world. Now an acclaimed journalist, she writes for major news outlets to push for justice and to light a path for Indigenous women, girls, and survivors. In her brilliant debut, Sterritt shares her memoir alongside investigative reporting into cases of missing and murdered Indigenous women in Canada, showing how colonialism and racism led to a society where Sterritt struggled to survive as a young person, and where the lives of Indigenous women and girls are ignored and devalued.
Lou Allison and Jane Wilde, Gumboot Guys
Gumboot Girls and Dancing in Gumboots chronicled the fascinating and inspiring stories of the 1970’s migration of women seeking a new way of life on BC’s West Coast, from Prince Rupert and Haida Gwaii to the Comox Valley on Vancouver Island. But what about the men who came in search of their own adventure, who became smitten with boats and the smell of salty air? Now, Gumboot Guys joins the two previous collections in chronicling this exciting decade, when all seemed possible.
Jess Housty, Crushed Wild Mint
Crushed Wild Mint is a collection of poems embodying land love and ancestral wisdom, deeply rooted to the poet’s motherland and their experience as a parent, herbalist and careful observer of the patterns and power of their territory. Jess Housty grapples with the natural and the supernatural, transformation and the hard work of living that our bodies are doing—held by mountains, by oceans, by ancestors and by the grief and love that come with communing.
Emelia Symington-Fedy, Skid Dogs
Emelia Symington-Fedy grew up with her girl gang on the railroad tracks of a small town in British Columbia. Unsupervised and wild, the girls explored the power and shortcomings of “best” friendships and their growing sexuality.
Two decades later an eighteen-year-old girl is murdered on Halloween on the same tracks, and Symington-Fedy returns to her hometown to stay with her mother, who is fearful of a murderer at large.
While the media narrows its focus on how the girl dared be alone on the tracks, Symington-Fedy slowly comes to terms with the mistreatment of her own teenage body. Giving a bold and often darkly humorous first-hand account of nineties rape culture and the sexual coercion that still permeates girlhood, Symington-Fedy holds her hometown close and accountable and exposes the subtle ways that misogyny shows up daily.
Iona Whishaw, To Track a Traitor
It’s an early morning in May when Lane is pulled from a deep sleep by a concerning phone call from Scotland—her grandfather has had a heart attack. Lane hastily makes plans to fly overseas, and a dejected Inspector Darling prepares himself for a stint of bachelorhood. But before he can begin to dwell on it the Nelson Police learn that Ben Arden, a local cad, has gone out for a late-night boat ride and not returned, which immediately sets the town rumour mill churning.
Discover more B.C. Bestsellers here.
