Govier, Katherine

Creation

Running two steps ahead of the bailiff, alternately praised and reviled, John James Audubon set himself the audacious task of drawing, from nature, every bird in North America. The result was his masterpiece, The Birds of America. In June 1833, partway through his mission, he enlisted his son, Captain Bayfield of the Royal Navy, and a party of young gentlemen to set sail for nesting grounds no ornithologist had ever seen, in the treacherous passage between Newfoundland and Labrador. Creation explores the short, stormy summer throughout which the captain became the artist's foil, measuring stick, and the recipient of his long-held secrets. It is an exploration of that fateful expedition, a probing and imaginative narrative that fills in a gap in the visionary naturalist's well-documented life.

In this atmospheric and enthralling novel, Katherine Govier tells the story of a man torn between the lies he has lived by and the truth he now needs. Her novel recreates the summer in which "the world's greatest living bird artist" finally understood the paradox embedded in his art: that the act of creation is also an act of destruction.

The Truth Teller

For fifty years, Dugald Laird and Francesca Morrow have had the perfect marriage. Together, they've held up the beacon of art, truth, poetry, classical learning and Greek myth in a tiny school on the edge of upper-class Toronto, devoting their lives to rescuing the outcast children of the well-to-do. But the cracks are finally starting to show. The catalyst is a new girl at school, Cassie, an awkward loner with an eye for unpalatable truths. Swiftly recruited by fearless Vida of the wild orange hair, Cassie becomes the propulsive force behind the school's rebel girl gang. The other trouble zone is Dugald, who is increasingly haunted by the wife and children he abandoned without a second thought for the glorious Francesca.

Three Views of Crystal Water

Going Through the Motions: A Novel