Tending the Remnant Damage

Bulkley Valley author Sheila Peters will soon see the release of her first book of short fiction, Tending the Remnant Damage, by Beach Holme Publishing.

This is a collection of loosely linked stories whose characters, whether they live in the Queen Charlotte Islands or the Prairies, are plain, ordinary men and women who have seemingly everyday experiences that glimmer with the extraordinary.

In Tending the Remnant Damage, Peters creates people who often feel out of sync with the spiritual, emotional and physical environments they find themselves in: Two old people on a farm try to comprehend the inevitable fate befalling them, all the while contemplating the strange goings-on of neighbors… A young woman on the lam from Texas finds herself beached in the Queen Charlottes on her way to Alaska… A punked-up Vancouver girl accompanies a crusty grandmother on a tense hunting trek in the drizzly woods. Their universe is our universe, but with a twist that makes it refreshingly new and decidedly different.

Sheila Peters has worked as a reporter, weaver, human-rights activist, and English instructor. Her non-fiction book, Canyon Creek: A Script, was published by Creekstone Press. Peter's stories have appeared in numerous literary journals, including Prism International, Grain, Room of One's Own, and Event. She lives in Smithers.

From Tending the Remnant Damage

I don't know how much longer he's going to be able to wait. I take my pills, and he helps me to the couch. He moved it into the kitchen right beside the wood heather after Christmas, after that long cold spell. I couldn't wait to get warm.

I lie there and remind him where to put the groceries. His back stiffens. I can see him figuring out how to ignore me. Because he's getting his own system now, one he can handle. He's not restricted by tradition, by what we women see in all those visits to other women's kitchens. He's moved just about everything out of the bottom cupboards. Soup tins, glasses are in drawers. It makes sense. He doesn't bend very well. He wants to get help; home nursing, homemakers. But I want to wait until winter. Maybe then.

So I don't say much. I look outside and watch the grey jays tend their nest, trying not to think about how bare the shelves are looking, how thin we're both getting. I watch until shadows at the edges of my vision take shape.

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