Discover Eight Gift-Worthy Local Books for the Holiday Season

Any reader will tell you that a book makes for an extra-special gift for the holidays: it shows that you really thought about that person and what makes them tick. Plus, the implication of a book gift — that you also wish them an uninterrupted six to eight hours of reading time — is very welcome during the busy holiday season.

If you’re looking for a little help on matching the deserving folks on your list with the book of their dreams, this list of eight books, all published by Canadian independent literary publishers, is your lifeline. Get them direct from the publisher, or support your favourite local independent bookstore (because buying independent, from independents, is a beautiful thing).

For the community organizer in love with plants and poetry

Crushed Wild Mint
By Jess Housty
(Nightwood Editions)

Crushed Wild Mint is a collection of poems embodying land love and ancestral wisdom, deeply rooted to the poet’s motherland and their experience as a parent, herbalist and careful observer of the patterns and power of their territory. Jess Housty grapples with the natural and the supernatural, transformation and the hard work of living that our bodies are doing — held by mountains, by oceans, by ancestors and by the grief and love that come with communing.

Housty’s exploration of history and futurity, ceremony and sexuality, grieving and thriving invites us to look both inward and outward to redefine our sense of community. Through these poems we can explore living and loving as a practice, and placemaking as an essential part of exploring our humanity and relationality.

For the adventurer in your life

Joe Pete
By Ian McCulloch
(Latitude 46 Publishing)

Sandy Mecowatch, a descendant of Missinabi Cree people, falls through the ice, leaving behind his wife Louise and 11-year-old daughter Alison “Joe Pete.” Joe Pete’s grief propels her to risk searching for her father in the same winter conditions that took him.

Along with her obedient and protective cousin Simon, they embark on a journey where they will find more than they anticipated buried beneath the snow. Their journey will unlock the ancestors and spirits embedded in the present who call back to a past marked by war and kinship, by conflict and wisdom that continue to contour their trajectory towards the future.

For your radical comrades, co-conspirators or cousins

The Mantle of Struggle: A Biography of Black Revolutionary Rosie Douglas
By Irving Andre
(Between the Lines)

After his imprisonment and subsequent deportation from Canada in 1976, having been named a danger to national security for his activity in anti-Black racism counter protests in Montreal, Rosie Douglas participated in political movements around the world building global solidarity. He became a leader of the Libyan-based revolutionary group World Mathaba and supported Nelson Mandela’s African National Congress.

Once back home in Dominica, he led the movement for Dominica’s full political independence from Great Britain, then served first as a senator in the post-independence government, then an MP, party leader, and finally, prime minister. Relying on family sources, interviews, newspaper articles, government documents and Douglas’s own articles, letters and speeches, Irving Andre has drawn a rich and riveting record of this important Black revolutionary.

For anyone who wants to know more about Indigenous culture and paths forward to Truth and Reconciliation

The First Few Feet in a World of Wolves
By Scott Mainprize
(At Bay Press)

The First Few Feet in a World of Wolves chronicles the fictionalization of the year the author spent teaching in a remote Inuit community, Aupaluk. The story is told through the voice of Nomad, who finds himself very much at odds with the land itself. Nomad slowly learns how to reconnect with his fractured history as he embraces and is embraced by the Elders and his own students.

Told in crisp, spare prose, this debut novel brings forward a powerful new Indigenous voice to the literary landscape. David Bouchard calls the book “A source of education, inspiration and hope.”

For the people in your life who are a little alienated by this modern world

The Clarion
By Nina Dunic
(Invisible Publishing)

Peter works in a kitchen, is an aspiring trumpeter, and is a little lost. So is his sister Stasi, who is falling apart after losing out on a promotion she's certain that she deserved. The Clarion follows these two siblings over five days and five months, respectively, exploring rituals of connection and belonging, themes of intimacy and performance, and how far we wander to find, or lose, our sense of self.

Longlisted for this year's Scotiabank Giller Prize, The Clarion is for the thoughtful reader who wants to get in on the ground floor of a promising literary career. A “novel of small, graceful moments of epiphany, fleeting happenstance connections, like the plaintive sound of a trumpet in the dark. A wonderful, and promising, debut,” writes the Toronto Star.

For the climate-conscious reader in your circle

Children of Tomorrow
By J.R. Burgmann
(Enfield & Wizenty/Great Plains Press)

There are plenty of books set after an environmental collapse. Where Children of Tomorrow differs is in imagining the collapse itself; how it might come about, how people will cope and hopefully survive.

Based in Australia at the Monash Climate Change Communication and Research Hub, J.R. Burgmann considers the impact of our current climate crisis, and the consequences to come in our near future, across successive generations of characters.

Published in North America by Enfield & Wizenty, Children of Tomorrow is for climate and environmentally conscious readers interested in a scientifically plausible imagining of the climate crisis, and what comes after.

For those who love a mystery, wrapped up with messy family drama

Echo Lane
By Sandra Kelly
(Stonehouse Publishing)

Patsy Keane has spent her life running from her past, her alcoholic mother, and a lie she told the day her little sister Kathleen went missing. Forty-two years later, she’s succeeded in building a stable life; until the past shows up on her doorstep, that is. A woman arrives claiming to be Kathleen's childhood friend, Nora Stone, and to have information about Kathleen’s fate.

As Patsy tries to figure out whether Nora is real, real but crazy, or something even more sinister, the rest of her carefully compartmentalized life begins to come apart, one well-built piece at a time. Echo Lane is the quintessential domestic thriller you can’t put down.

For the endless explorer with a deep fascination of the thrilling danger of the oceans’ deepest regions

The Deepest Map: The High-Stakes Race to Chart the World's Oceans
By Laura Trethewey
(Goose Lane Editions)

Did you know that five oceans cover approximately 70 per cent of the Earth? And yet, we know little of what lies beneath them… for now. Scientists, investors, militaries and private explorers are competing in an epic venture to completely map the oceans’ floor, and ocean journalist Laura Trethewey has captured it all in this captivating new book.

A true tale of science, nature, technology, and extreme outdoor adventure, The Deepest Map both illuminates why we love — and fear — the Earth’s final frontier.

Come back tomorrow for part two offering eight more gift-worthy books from Canadian independent literary publishers.