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.

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

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