Wayne Fraser's examination of the works of eighteen women writers in English Canada's history demonstrates how Canadian women's literature provides rich insight into the social and political development of the country. Fraser approaches the subject as a literary critic, arguing that these narratives were constructed within a certain social and political framework that resulted in a body of literature whose themes focus on the relationship of the individual to the larger community, an essentially feminine orientation. The study, arranged chronologically from colonial times through the 1980s, parallels women's personal experiences with Canada's political development. In-depth analyses of works of such notables as Frances Brooke, Ethel Wilson, and Margaret Atwood support Fraser's contention that the literature, as a forum where women voiced their personal concerns regarding marriage, colonialism, independence, and feminism, reflects and comments on Canada's political identity as a country with a continuing commitment to compromise, cooperation, and international peace. A bibliography and general subject index complete this volume, which will furnish historians and critics of women's literature with a new understanding of the topic.

It was Cuba in the early 1960's as the USA and USSR brought the world to the brink of nuclear war. Renowned author Ernest Hemingway was under surveillance by the Federal Bureau of Investigation. There he was, America's most famous writer, living in the heart of the revolution in Communist Cuba. There he was, author of For Whom the Bells Tolls, the novel Fidel Castro claimed to have used as a model for his guerilla insurgency. Hemingway's Island is a rich adventure that exposes readers to two distinct narrators of Hemingway's last, wild days in Cuba: Mary, Hemingway's fourth wife, describing his last week in their Cuban home, the Finca Vigia, and Alf O'Malley, a Canadian graduate student in 2010 Havana with his pregnant girlfriend. Alf is a hyperactive, awkward hero who falls into dangerous misadventures as he searches for Mary's long-lost manuscript, written for Life Magazine but never published.

One day I walked around a port and docks where fishing boats were docked. I saw oil floating by, some newspaper and bits of rope. It was then that I got the inspiration for Docklands, set in New York.