Context by Tyler Keevil and Catrin Menai.“The small mining and farming towns along the plains are connected by railroads, where, along the edge of the tracks, hundreds of huge gable-roofed wooden grain elevators used to stand. A Canadian reading these stories can imagine the family, their post-urban life in a town that feels left behind and abandoned, and the tension of deciding to stay put or move again.” – Christina E. Kramer"A rich and sonorous collection. In these beautifully composed pieces, Gail Hughes exposes the bedrock of the Alberta Badlands, and the emotional core of her characters. You can feel the heat, taste the dust, smell the wheatgrass on the prairie breeze. Each story sings on its own, and together they harmonise to create a resonant whole. The result is haunting and compelling. Somehow, through these intimate elegies of hope, heartbreak, and family strife, Hughes manages to evoke an entire life." – Tyler KeevilEllie grows up in a small town in Canada, on the edge of the Southern Alberta Badlands. The nearby prairie is her playground; in its bleak, beautiful expanses she discovers imaginary flamingos and a real fossilized dinosaur – a find exciting enough to prompt a visit from ahigh-powered academic. At such moments the remote community is briefly illuminated by a sense of significance, of possibility, but it soon relapses into its quiet ways. Ellie knows she will never be glamorous like her English friend Olivia, who has visited exotic places likePenzance and gets to go to the drive-in with Lance Hamilton, the school’s handsome bad boy. But their world is too small for both girls; they leave for the big city, find love, lose it again and learn that disillusionment is a condition of life, not confined to any particular place. Years later Ellie, now living in Wales with her son, revisits her old home and makes a tentative peace with it.
