W.O. Mitchell
W.O. Mitchells critically acclaimed novel, The Kite, is a humorous yet touching story of a journalists worst nightmare. Set in the Prairie backwater of Shelby, Alberta, seasoned reporter and minor television celebrity David Lang arrives to write a magazine feature on the towns oldest living citizen, the 111-year-old curmudgeon Daddy Sherry. Still recovering from the disappointments of a fatherless childhood, the uptight David just wants to file his story as quickly as possible and hightail it back to Toronto. But he hasnt reckoned on the cantankerous cunning of Daddy Sherry. As David chases his recalcitrant subject all over town, he begins to understand the meaning of life and finds love and happiness for the first time. This new edition of The Kite coincided with the publication of a newly discovered and never-before-published edition of the novel in audio format, featuring Mitchells own reading. It also introduces a whole new generation of readers to the rampaging Daddy Sherry, a holy terror whom Margaret Laurence considered to be Mitchells best and most complete character.
According to Jake and the Kid
Set in the forties and fifties, these stories take us back to a simpler, gentler world, the one we all like to think we grew up in. The Kid at the centre of the stories is a boy on a Saskatchewan farm “down Government Road from Crocus, which is on the CNR line between Tiger Lily and Conception.” Jake is the hired hand who helps the Kid’s moth …
An Evening with W.O. Mitchell
Anyone who ever saw one of W.O. Mitchell’s readings will know why they were described as unforgettable. Unruly white hair flying, fist raised, voice husky or thundering, eyes wide in innocent astonishment at a double entendre raising a laugh, W.O. Mitchell did not give readings from his work; he performed them. He loved “the immediate thrust of …
How I Spent My Summer Holidays
When How I Spent My Summer Holidays was first published in 1981 a Western reviewer wrote: “If Who Has Seen the Wind told the story of a young boy’s coming to terms with death, How I Spent My Summer Holidays tells of a young man’s attempt to come to terms with his own sexuality and that of the world around him.”
The twelve-year-old young man …
Jake and the Kid
W. O. Mitchell’s stories of Ma, the Kid, her twelve-year-old son, Jake, the hired hand, and the citizens of Crocus, Saskatchewan, began to appear in the pages of Maclean’s in 1942. In 1950, the stories began running on CBC Radio and continued until 1956. Three hundred and twenty episodes were produced in all. This audiobook features a selection …
The Devil Is a Travelling Man
W.O. Mitchell jokingly called himself the great re-run king, but his retellings of age-old conflicts between humanity and the Devil strikingly display his versatile adaptive talents. The Black Bonspiel of Wullie MacCrimmon is a whimsical take on the Faust legend with a distinctly Canadian flavour. Filled with wry humour and set against the backdrop …
The Kite
W.O. Mitchells critically acclaimed novel, The Kite, is a humorous yet touching story of a journalists worst nightmare. Set in the Prairie backwater of Shelby, Alberta, seasoned reporter and minor television celebrity David Lang arrives to write a magazine feature on the towns oldest living citizen, the 111-year-old curmudgeon Daddy Sherry. S …
Who Has Seen the Wind
When W.O. Mitchell died in 1998 he was described as “Canada's best-loved writer.” Every commentator agreed that his best – and his best-loved – book was Who Has Seen the Wind. Since it was first published in 1947, this book has sold almost a million copies in Canada.
As we enter the world of four-year-old Brian O’Connal, his father the dr …
