The Sometimes Lake

The stories in Sandy Bonny’s collection take place in settings from the Arctic Circle to Alberta’s badlands, and from the waters of the Georgia Straight to the grasslands of the prairies, and the characters that we meet in these places will be oddly familiar or perhaps familiarly odd. There are children who live in the magical territory between their imagination and their parents’ realities; road builders from China and Australia who know the ghostly secrets at road’s end; men who shape their lives with the predictability of beehives; women who try to grieve for their unborn children; and those who play at suicide. At the vortex of these surprising plots churns Bonny’s keen interest in science and its unexpected effect on human action and emotion. “Sandy Bonny[‘s] stories move effortlessly from the microcosm of intimate details in the lives of her characters to the macrocosm of great forces that animate the universe and sustain life on earth. Look at the science, she seems to say, and at the fragile miracle of life around us.” — David Carpenter “ . . . these subtle skillful tales have crisp and new flavors; they yield discovery upon discovery. This is a powerful debut collection.” — Fred Stenson