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Mennonite Heritage Village
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Fiction
Title	Author	Retail Price	Publisher	Click to buy

Calm Before the Storm, The	Janice L. Dick	$16.09	Herald Press
362 pages, paperback. South Russia, 1914. The world is at war and revolution threatens. Against this backdrop of fear and danger, three young people search for hope and love. Katarina Hildebrandt’s tranquil life on her family’s Crimean estate is about to change. Tutor Johann Sudermann has found true faith, but it will turn his life upside-down. And Paul Gregorovich Tekanin, working for the revolution in St. Petersburg, finds it will demand his soul as well as his wit and strength.

Chiropractor, The	Jack Klassen	16.99

Complicated Kindness, A	Miriam Toews	22.00	Random House
246 pages, paperback. A work of fierce originality and brilliance, Miriam Toews’s award-winning novel explores the ties that bind families together and the forces that tear them apart. It is the world according to Nomi Nickel, a heartbreakingly bewildered and wry young woman trapped in a small Mennonite town that seeks to set her on the path to righteousness and smother her at the same time.

Faspa with Jast: A Snack of Mennonite Stories told by Family and Guests	Eleanor Hildebrand Chornoboy	28.95	self-published
277 pages, paperback. This book is a collection of Mennonite stories with global appeal. The pages serve up vignettes and anecdotes of a rural way of life experienced by Mennonites during the late 1800s to the middle 1900s. The tales, shared by many contributors, are seasoned with laughter, tears, and tips.

Feast of Longing, A	Sarah Klassen	18.95	Fitzhenry & Whiteside
279 pages, paperback. The author does not flinch for an instant from viewing harsh and gritty realities. But always, embedded in these realities, glows a rich and life-affirming beauty. These wonderful, complex stories are told in language that is simply elegant in its clarity, precision, and artistic detail.

Flying Troutmans, The	Miriam Toews	22.00	Vintage Canada
275 pages, paperback. The impetuous Hattie has just been dumped by her Paris boyfriend; her sister, Min, is going through a particularly dark period; and Min’s two kids, Logan and Thebes, are not talking, and talking way too much, respectively. So when Hattie receives an SOS call from eleven-year-old Thebes, she grabs the first plane home. There she discovers that Min is on her way to a psychiatric ward, and Hattie assumes responsibility for the kids. She quickly realizes that she is way out of her league and hatches a hare-brained plan to find the kids’ long-lost father. With only the most tenuous lead to go on, she piles Logan and Thebes into their Ford Aerostar, and armed with some art supplies, a mondo pair of headphones, a cooler full of food and a hope and a prayer, they hit the road and head south.

Gray Matter Graffitti
214 pages, paperback. Draft-dodger, Jesus-freak, “conditional pacifist,” prolific writer, devoted father, “tactical anarchist & strategic monarchist,” unwavering romantic, bohemian bard, “ecstatic depressive,” gregarious hermit… this rollicking collection of some 200 original works draws from thousands of poems penned over the course of four decades – inspired ruminations by Sam W. Reimer, an (hitherto) unsung gem of a poet.

In the Eye of the Storm	Janice L. Dick	16.09	Herald Press
394 pages, paperback. As their world is torn apart by world war, the Russian Revolution, and church and family conflicts, Katarina Hildebrandt and Johann Sudermann strive to maintain their faith in the God they have come to know. Meanwhile, Paul Gregorovich Tekanin has chosen what he thought to be the path to Utopia, but is instead finding it to be a way of darkness and death. Will he remember the warnings of his childhood friend, Johann, or will the violence of revolution destroy him?

Laina	Betty Barkman	12.99
259 pages, paperback. Laina’s excitement mounts as her family moves westward. She loves helping her parents forge a new homestead out of the untamed prairies. But how will she ever cope with the unforeseen challenges before her?

Of This Earth
389 pages, paperback. From award-winning author Rudy Wiebe comes a moving memoir of a boy’s coming of age in isolated Speedwell, Saskatchewan, where many Mennonite immigrants forged a new life in the 1930s, clearing stony, silty bushland and digging precious wells one bucket of dirt at a time. It evokes a young boy’s growing love of the poplar-forested land, his thrilling discovery of the power of reading, and shows how these elements informed his destiny as a writer. This book is a hymn to a lost place that only a writer of Rudy Wiebe’s powers could summon.

Out of the Storm	Janice L. Dick	16.09	Herald Press
347 pages, paperback. Death and destruction rage through the Mennonite colonies as Red and White armies continue to requisition, recruit, and advance their positions. Ongoing strife and accompanying drought result in severe famine and disease, and the worst enemy of all – fear. Johann Sudermann works with Benjamin Janz to secure permission for Mennonite emigration, but they are faced with seemingly insurmountable obstacles at every turn. Meanwhile, Katarina attempts to sustain her family and friends amid chaos and uncertainty, and Paul Gregorovich Tekanin tries to survive in anonymity. The Mennonites of South Russia face a fierce struggle for faith and survival as their dreams are dashed one by one, yet they cling to the hope that God will yet intervene and speak to them as he did to Job, “out of the storm”.

Pause that Refreshes: Poems & Stories, The	Jacob M. Fehr	11.00	self-published
41 pages, paperback, 1998. Writings about ordinary events of life.

Peace Shall Destroy Many	Rudy Wiebe	25.00	Random House
297 pages, paperback. Originally published in 1962, Rudy Wiebe’s first novel aroused great controversy. Exploring religious intolerance within a Mennonite community on the Canadian prairies, it stands today as a magnificent portrait of a remarkable and unique people, a tale that eloquently explores the universal concerns of faith, humanity, peace and violence.

Russlander, The	Sandra Birdsellh	21.00	Random House
397 pages, paperback. Katherine (Katya) Vogt is now an old woman living in Winnipeg, but the story of how she and her family came to Canada begins in Russia in 1910, on a wealthy Mennonite estate. Here they lived in a world bounded by the prosperity of their landlords and by the poverty and disgruntlement of the Russian workers who toil on the estate. But in the wake of the First World War, the tensions engulfing the country begin to intrude on the community, leading to an unspeakable act of violence. In the aftermath of that violence, and in the difficult years that follow, Katya tries to come to terms with the terrible events that befell her and her family.

Salvation of Yasch Siemens	Armin Wiebe	18.95	Turnstone Press
175 pages, paperback. Born “on the wrong side of the double dike” in the mythical Mennonite village of Gutenthal, Yasch Siemens seems destined for a life as a hired hand in love with the wrong girl. But all of that changes when he meets Oata Needarp. Two-hundred pound Oata is determined to make Yasch hers, and it only takes some chokecherry wine and the fragrance of Oata’s “Evening in Schanzenfeld” perfume to seal Yasch’s fate. Shortlisted for both the Stephen Leacock Memorial Medal for Humour and the Books in Canada Best First Novel Award, The Salvation of Yasch Siemens is an outrageous, comic ride through a community as memorable as any in Canadian literature.

“Saskatchewan” Sounds So Nice: Poems and Stories	Jacob M. Fehr	12.00	self-published
63 pages, paperback, 2009. This is a book of true stories of folks who went through struggles in a new land and just never gave up. Stories of some of the many people Jacob came in contact with who told of their faith, to ever keep looking up when things get rough.

Steppes are the Colour of Sepia, The	Connie Braun	21.95	Ronsdale Press
245 pages, paperback. Connie Braun’s narrative continues where Sandra Birdsell’s historical fiction The Russlaender has left off – back to the catastrophic events of twentieth-century Eastern Europe. Braun intimately ushers us into the life of one extended Mennonite family, and in particular the life of her father and grandfather, living under the terror of Stalin, and later, under the military expansion of Hitler’s Nazi regime in the Ukraine. In a memoir that is historically faithful to documents, letters, old photographs and personal testimony, Braun offers a second-generation witness to all those who have suffered displacement in history’s disasters, and whose obscure stories must be told. In doing so, she honours the spirit of resilience embodied by the refugees who have created and transformed Canadian society.

Stolen Life	Rudy Wiebe	23.00	Random House
444 pages, paperback. This is a chronicle of justice and injustice, the true story of events that put Yvonne Johnson behind bars for life at the age of twenty-seven. Above all, it is the unforgettable story of a Native woman who has broken a lifetime of silence to share the understandings that sustain her. Written with the compassion that is the hallmark of Rudy Wiebe’s work, and informed by Yvonne Johnson’s own intelligence and poetic eloquence, this award-winning book unites one of Canada’s foremost writers and the great-great-granddaughter of Chief Big Bear in a collaboration that speaks to us all.

Sweeter than all the World	Rudy Wiebe	21.00	Random House
438 pages, paperback. This is an enthralling saga of the Mennonite people and one man’s emotional voyage into his own heritage. At the heart of the novel is Adam Wiebe, born to a homesteading prairie community. Love and success come easily to him until, faced with the collapse of his marriage and the disappearance of his daughter, he becomes obsessed with understanding his ancestral past.

Swing Low: a Life	Miriam Toews	19.95	Random House
228 pages, paperback. One morning, Mel Toews put on his coat and hat and walked out of town, prepared to die. A loving husband and father, faithful member of the Mennonite church and immensely popular school teacher, he was a pillar of his close-knit community. Yet after a lifetime of struggle, he could no longer face the darkness of manic depression. In Swing Low, his daughter Miriam recounts Mel’s life as she imagines he would have told it, right up to the day he took his final walk. A gracefully written and compassionate recounting of a man’s battle with depression in a small Mennonite community, Swing Low is a moving meditation on illness, family, faith and love.

Tatsea	Armin Wiebe	18.95	Turnstone Press
245 pages, paperback. Tatsea is an adventure story of love and survival set in Canada’s Subarctic in the late 1700s, a time when the Dogrib people were under constant threat of attack by raiders supplied with European weapons. Filled with vivid detail, it re-creates an era of cultural clash and the violent change that accompanies it.

Watermelon Syrup	Annie Jacobsen	24.95	U of Toronto Press
265 pages, paperback. Lexi, a young Mennonite woman from Saskatchewan, comes to work as housekeeper and nanny for a doctor’s family in Waterloo, Ontario, during the depression. Dr. Gerald Oliver is a handsome philanderer who lives with his neurotic and alcoholic wife, Cammy, and their two children. Lexi soon adapts to modern conveniences, happily wears Cammy’s expensive cast-off clothes, and is transformed from an innocent into a chic urban beauty. When Lexi is called home to Saskatchewan to care for her dying mother, she returns a changed person. At home, Lexi finds a journal written by her older brother during the family’s journey from Russia to Canada. In it she reads of a tragedy kept secret for years, one that reconciles her early memories of her mother as joyful and loving with the burdened woman she became in Canada. Lexi returns to Waterloo, where a crisis of her own, coupled with the knowledge of this secret, serves as the catalyst for her realization that, unlike her mother, she must create her own destiny.

When War Came to Kleindarp and more Kleindarp stories	Al Reimer	16.95	Rosetta Projects
190 pages, paperback. Most of the short stories in this collection focus on the Mennonite town of Kleindarp during the mid-century, World War II decades. It is a staid Mennonite community that tries to ignore the war as much as possible while pursuing its rigorous religious practices and passion for “born again” spirituality. These stories illustrate that even a small, isolated Mennonite world has both dark and bright sides where human nature can flare above oppression and prejudice, and envision life in new and creative forms.

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