A Hard Witching (22 page)
Authors: Jacqueline Baker
Tags: #Fiction, #Short Stories (Single Author)
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A HARD WITCHING
AND OTHER STORIES
“Baker shows in this debut collection an impressive precision and control…. A writer to watch.”
—
Quill &Quire
“Masterful and thoroughly enjoyable…. A book to reread, twice as good the second time. Jacqueline Baker, with an honest and skillful debut, surpasses the crowd by miles.”
—The Globe and Mail
“After spending time with the memorable characters in the eight superbly crafted stories in this collection, readers will be left with an admiration for their will to survive. They deal not only with the unforgiving geography and climate, but the heartaches that life inevitably brings.”
—
Edmonton Journal
“It would be too easy to characterize Baker as a western Canadian writer; she evokes more than that. Baker is strongly reminiscent of Annie Proulx in her depictions of the wide-open west, and the places and spaces in the hearts of those there….
[A Hard Witching]
is highly charged and tighter than taut.”
—The Hamilton Spectator
“Jacqueline Baker is one of the most talented writers I have ever read. Imagine sipping a fine wine filled with character and flavour.”
—
The Lethbridge Herald
“[Baker’s] stories are steeped in a rich sense of rural familiarity. This book compares favourably to two other recent Prairie collections, Sharon Butala’s
Real Life
and Gloria Sawai’s
A Song for Nettie Johnson.
”
—
The Gazette
(Montreal)
“Prose like this proves both Baker’s talent and potential.”
—
Winnipeg Free Press
“Reading
A Hard Witching
is like looking at an album of photographs taken in a rural setting and somehow being able to settle into each one, gain an understanding of the emotions of the people featured in it and then quietly move out and on to the next image.”
—
FFWD
(Calgary)
“Baker’s stories and characters are influenced by landscape, and there’s no doubt Baker knows this terrain. She shows how the natural world both compels and repels the people who live in it.”
—
Ottawa Citizen
“Insightful…. An indefinable humanness manifests itself when her characters reach out, but don’t quite make the connections they want. As in real life, the answers are left hanging.”
—The StarPhoenix
(Saskatoon)
“What Alistair MacLeod has done for the Maritimes, Jacqueline Baker has done for the Sand Hills region of southwestern Saskatchewan. It is insightful and accurate in its depiction of the beauty and menace of the landscape and of the brutality and tenderness of its inhabitants.”
—Diane Schoemperlen
“Jacqueline Baker must be very wise to articulate human nature as she does. Her stories are plump and filling, each paragraph packed with detail and psychological complexity.”
—Pearl Luke
“Jacqueline Baker writes with subtlety and grace. Her evocative portraits of western lives ring with a quiet and truthful loneliness that lingers well beyond the turn of the final page.”
—Camilla Gibb
A Hard Witching and Other Stories
© 2003 by Jacqueline Baker.
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EPub Edition © SEPTEMBER 2010 ISBN: 978-1-443-40172-2
A Phyllis Bruce Book, published by HarperPerennialCanada, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers Ltd
No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in reviews.
First published in hardcover by Phyllis Bruce Books and HarperFlamingoCanada, imprints of HarperCollins Publishers Ltd, 2003. This paperback edition 2004.
HarperCollins Publishers Ltd
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Toronto, Ontario, Canada
M4W 1A8
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National Library of Canada Cataloguing in Publication
Baker, Jacqueline
A hard witching and other stories / Jacqueline Baker.
“A Phyllis Bruce book”.
ISBN 0-00-639245-8
I. Title.
Ps8553-A3793H37 2004 c813’.6
C2003-905662-7
RRD
9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
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