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Fiction Small Town & Rural

Mountain Blues

by (author) Sean Joyce

Publisher
NeWest Press
Initial publish date
May 2018
Category
Small Town & Rural, Literary
  • Paperback / softback

    ISBN
    9781988732305
    Publish Date
    May 2018
    List Price
    $19.95

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Description

Welcome to Eldorado, a small mountain town in the Kootenays, chock-a-block with aging hippies, eccentrics, loggers, and protestors. When Roy Breen moves to Eldorado after over a decade of working as a journalist in Vancouver, he is impressed by the soaring glacial vistas and the friendliness of the townsfolk, as well as the quality of the coffee they pour. Unfortunately the threat of cutbacks is looming over the local hospital and Roy must find a way to balance his journalistic integrity with the need to join his new neighbours in fighting to keep the hospital open.

In the vein of Stephen Leacock's Sunshine Sketches of a Little Town, poet Sean Arthur Joyce's debut novel Mountain Blues is a tale of warmth and joviality.

About the author

Sean Arthur Joyce, better known in the Kootenays as Art Joyce, has published two books of regional history and in 2014 published Laying the Children's Ghosts to Rest: Canada's Home Children in the West (Hagios Press) on the little-known historical phenomenon of the 100,000 poor children exported from the UK to work as indentured child labourers on Canadian farms.

Joyce's poems and essays on poetics have appeared in Canadian, American and British literary journals. In 2016 his poetics thesis, A New Romanticism for the 21st Century, appeared in the peer-reviewed journal Canadian Poetry from the University of Western Ontario. His poetry has appeared in several anthologies, both Canadian and international, most recently in the Corbel Stone Press Contemporary Poetry series (UK 2017), Nanaimo Public Library anthology and Fire & Sky, a fundraiser for victims of the Ft. McMurray, Alberta firestorm of 2016.

New Orphic Publishers of Nelson, BC Canada has published three collections of his poetry, The Charlatans of Paradise, Star Seeds, and The Price of Transcendence, the latter edited by renowned Canadian poet Tom Wayman, who calls it "a first class collection." bill bissett reviewed Charlatans with one word: "excellent."

In 2016 he produced his second poetry video, Dead Crow: Prologue, with music soundtrack composed by Noel Fudge and video production by Isaac Carter of ICandy Films. A live version of the performance toured the Kootenays in Fall 2016.

Joyce's first novel, Mountain Blues, is due out in May 2018 from NeWest Press.

Sean Joyce's profile page

Excerpt: Mountain Blues (by (author) Sean Joyce)

Lance took a cigar from a small box in his desk drawer and motioned toward the door. "Looks like the sun's still with us. Care to step outside for a smoke?"

"Never touch the stuff, but thanks."

Robertson stood outside the door, legs athwart like the captain on the deck of his ship. He had the grace to blow the thick cloud of smoke away from me. "I take it you're not a shirt and tie man," he grinned.

"Nope. Ever since the corporate bean counters took over, journalism's been going down the tubes. They don't seem to get that doing a decent job costs money. They cut and cut--except of course for executive salaries--until even the bone hurts. 'Til they cut their own throats, producing such crap no one wants to read it anyway. Or no one believes it."

Robertson was savouring the taste of the cigar in his mouth. "Yep, I get it. More stories cribbed from the wire services, more celebrity gossip, less local reporting. Shorter and shorter stories. Most newspapers aren't trusted anymore. We don't hold with that approach here at the Echo. People look to us as their community newspaper. If they want to read about the latest earthquake in China or the latest scandal in Ottawa they can get that on the Web. Or they can read it in one of the big-city dailies. No point us repeating it."

I shuffled, moving a pebble around with my toe. "Well. A true community newspaper. No celebrity gossip then?" I flashed him an arch smile.

He grinned back, laughing. "Not much call for it around here."

"I take it you're not part of the Interior Media Corp chain of so-called community newspapers?"

"Nope. One hundred percent locally owned and operated. My wife Donna and I run it together. She's the editor."

"And Ms. Jane Bordeaux?"

"Our proofreader and copy editor. She's in doing a little extra editing work to lighten Donna's load on the slew of media releases. She's very good at it."

"You still employ a proofreader? My God, I thought they'd gone extinct, judging by the sloppy copy in everything from the Globe and Mail to the New York Times these days."

"We have a surprising number of retired English professors who live here part-time, not to mention an overall high rate of literacy. And one or two grammar Nazis. You should read our letters page sometime."

"So you're backwoods but not backwards, then."

Robertson guffawed. "I like that. If you're not careful I may just use that as a slogan."

"Feel free to. In exchange for some work."

Robertson evaded this one. "So you finished school in Newcombe? Spend much time in Glacier Valley?"

I could tell he was sizing me up as a potential employee. I could have lied for advantage but it's just not my style. "Not really. The odd day trip up the Glacier River in the lower valley to go inner tubing. But that's about it. Surprising how insular you can get living in even a small city like Newcombe. But I'm a quick study. So tell me: Why 'Eldorado'?"

"You'll have to brush up on your local history." His face-cracking grin with its tobacco-stained teeth seemed mischievous, as if he were testing me.

"Well naturally I'm aware of the mining boom in the 1890s here--the ghost town of Silverado tucked into the Lowery Pass. I remember that much."

Robertson shrugged. "Well it seems some legacies live on, although in much mutated form. In the 1890s, it was folks coming here in search of Eldorado, the City of Gold--or in this case, silver. Then it was lumber. Briefly it was orchards. Then after two world wars it got pretty quiet around here 'til the sixties."

"And then it was the draft dodgers and back-to-the-landers."

"Yep. Another kind of City of Gold--or the anti-city, as the case may be. People came here to get away from cities and the wage-slave economy. The reverse of a century ago--not seeking wealth but avoiding it."

"Or seeking a different kind of wealth."

"You are a quick study."

"Sure, but I'm not quite up to date. I've been away for fifteen years."

"Well in that time it's been another kind of lifestyle seeker-- the spiritual fortune hunter. You can't swing a dead cat in the village of Applegrove in the south valley without hitting a half-dozen Tarot card readers, aromatherapists, and UFOlogists."

"I'll forgive the dead cat metaphor on behalf of my own feline. I take it you don't approve?"

A shrug accompanied his jaw-splitting grin. "I neither approve nor disapprove. We have our fair share of crystal gazers in the north valley too. As long as they take out ads in the Echo I don't really care."

"Fair enough."

"Then to complete the picture you have the grow-ops and the neo-Rastafarians, the white kids with dreads."

"I seem to remember something about that from my high school days here. I was a bit of a teenage hippie myself."

He flicked some ash from his cigar. "Our mayor once said if the cops ever shut down the grow-op industry the whole economy of the valley would collapse."

"Interesting culture."

"My sister Nicole once described it as 'Norman Rockwell with dreadlocks.'"

I had to chuckle. "I'll remember that one. That might even make a better slogan for the Echo than 'backwoods not backwards.'"

Editorial Reviews

Praise for Mountain Blues:
"Readers who identify with this altruistic quest will be rewarded."
~ Angie Abdou, Canadian Literature
"Sean Arthur Joyce uses a light, deft touch for topics that could be heavily righteous slogging. His characters are 3-D West Kootenay classics and his dialogue is a delight to 'hear' as it is so realistic in its rhythms that it sets each distinct character apart from the next: no easy feat. The humour, gentle and tolerant, reminds us that when we live in a small community, the most sound advice would be: Let your words be gentle in case they come back to bite you."
~ Caroline Woodward, The Ormsby Review
"Mountain Blues is rich with characters and setting. Joyce's fresh voice gently reels you in, hooking you with delicious humour, eccentric characters and insights into what it means to live in the Kootenays."
~ Garry Ryan, author of the Detective Lane mysteries
"Joyce has written the kind of novel that makes you want to locate his ideal community and move there immediately. And the kind that keeps you reading to see what happens when local solidarity pits itself against government penury and intractability. Poet, author and journalist, Joyce brings a unique toolbox of writing skills to bear in Mountain Blues that makes for crisp, lyrical prose, an engaging narrative, memorable characters, including an emotionally articulate cat, and a lightness of touch that is as surprising as it is delightful in a début novel."
~ Gary Geddes, author of Medicine Unbundled and The Resumption of Play
"Sean Arthur Joyce captures perfectly the contrast between the stunning landscapes of BC's West Kootenay region and the struggle to construct and protect a community."
~ Tom Wayman, author of Helpless Angels and The Shadows We Mistake for Love