Five books vie for County Reads 2015 title

Two non-fiction, an historical fiction and one fiction book highlight County Reads 2015.

The sixth annual event was launched at the Wellington library this week by the Written Word Committee of the Prince Edward County Arts Council.

The County Reads is a fun, free literary event in which five local residents champion their chosen book and vie for it to be voted as this year’s winner – the book which everyone in the County should read. The championing this year is to be held on the opening night of the PEC Authors Festival, April 16.

The books and presenters for this year are:

The Colony of Unrequited Dreams, by Wayne Johnston – presented by Judy Kent.
The Colony of Unrequited Dreams, a Canadian bestseller, is a novel about Newfoundland that centres on the story of Joe Smallwood, the true-life controversial political figure who ushered the island through confederation with Canada and became its first premier. Narrated from Smallwood’s perspective, it voices a deep longing on the part of the Newfoundlander to do something significant, “commensurate with the greatness of the land itself”.

A Tale for the Time Being, by Ruth Ozeki, presented by Hilary Foster.
In Tokyo, sixteen-year-old Nao has decided there’s only one escape from her aching loneliness and her classmates’ bullying. But before she ends it all, Nao first plans to document the life of her great grandmother, a Buddhist nun who’s lived more than a century. A diary is Nao’s only solace — and will touch lives in ways she can scarcely imagine. Across the Pacific, we meet Ruth, a novelist living on a remote island who discovers a collection of artifacts washed ashore in a Hello Kitty lunchbox —possibly debris from the devastating 2011 tsunami. As the mystery of its contents unfolds, Ruth is pulled into the past, into Nao’s drama and her unknown fate, and forward into her own future.
Into the Abyss, by Carol Shaben, presented by Andrew Binks.
Only four men survived the plane crash. The pilot. A politician. A cop… and the criminal he was shackled to. On an icy night in October 1984, a commuter plane carrying nine passengers crashed in the remote wilderness of northern Alberta, killing six people.  Shaben gives an astonishing true story of catastrophe and redemption. Shaben creates a nuanced and tightly braided portrait of four men and their shared trauma that is by turns terrifying and deeply humane.

An Irish Country Wedding, by Patrick Taylor, presented by Terry Culbert.
An Irish Country Wedding is another heart-warming addition to New York Times bestselling author Patrick Taylor’s Irish Country series. Love is in the air in the colourful Ulster village of Ballybucklebo, where Dr. Fingal Flahertie O’Reilly has finally proposed to the darling of his youth, Kitty O’Hallorhan. There’s a wedding to be planned, but before O’Reilly can make it to the altar, he and his young colleague, Barry Laverty, M.B., must deal with the usual round of eccentric patients—and crises both large and small.

Into The Blizzard: Walking the Fields of the Newfoundland Dead, by Michael Winter, presented by Ann Wardrop.
Michael Winter’s narrative follows parallel journeys. The first journey is that of the young men who came from Newfoundland’s outports, fields, villages and narrow city streets to join the storied regiment that led many of them to their deaths at Beaumont-Hamel during the Battle of the Somme on July 1, 1916. The second journey is the author’s, taken a century later as he walks in the footsteps of the dead men to discover what remains of their passage across land and through memory.