John Miedema

Smithson “Smithy” Ide is a runner, a cyclist, a reader, and one skinny kid. At least he used to be. As a boy, he ran to go fishing. He often had to run as part of his family’s efforts to find his sister, Bethany, afflicted with a voice that insists on violence and leaves her in a catatonic pose. Smithy’s searches were accelerated when his pop bought him a new maroon three-speed Raleigh bicycle, the kind we all wanted at his age. He would ride every day after school. Can …

Missing people overshadow the lives of young women in Windley’s collection of eight short stories, nominated for the Scotiabank Giller Prize in 2006. Saffi notices things but thinks it a curse after she spots a missing boy in her neighbour’s basement. Annabel’s father strives to reopen his private school after a student drowns, but Annabel dreams of escaping the island with her math tutor. Nadia tries to please everyone after her mother leaves her father the woodcarver for a logging mogul. Lydia’s grandmother survives the horrible death of her family, …

Anarchist Everett McQuade declares Whalebone Island in Nova Scotia an independent republic. Is anarchy a viable way of life? The island is home to independent fishers, children who have never had a formal education, pioneers of equal rights, and refugees from the city. Anarchy might be the best policy here. But can anarchy last when Everett McQuade wins a seat in the Halifax parliament?
I am reminded of LeGuinn’s The Dispossessed. Shevek leaves his home, a rebel moon colony that lives without government, to travel to the mother planet to …