We are excited to share that the Book Publishers Association of Alberta has announced that MEADOWLARK by Wendi Stewart (NeWest Press) and THE MYSTICS OF MILE END (Freehand Books) by Sigal Samuel have been shortlisted for the 2016 Alberta Book Publishing Awards! MEADOWLARK has been shortlisted in the Trade Fiction Book of the Year and Cover Design categories while THE MYSTICS OF MILE END has been nominated in the Trade Fiction Book of the Year category. The Alberta Book Publishing Awards are awarded every year to books by Alberta publishers, and this year there were over 77 entries for the 12 award categories.
In MEADOWLARK by Wendi Stewart, when her family’s car goes through the ice on Rainy Lake one cold March day in 1962, six-year-old Rebecca Archer is the only person her father is able to pull from the sinking vehicle. But as Rebecca grows up in a farmhouse haunted by the absence of her mother and baby brother, raised by a man left nearly paralyzed with grief, she wonders if her father really did save her after all. In her debut novel, Wendi Stewart tells the luminous, deeply imagined story of a young woman’s hard-won triumph over heartbreaking personal tragedy and the restorative power of friendship.
THE MYSTICS OF MILE END by Sigal Samuel weaves together four distinct voices to tell the story of the dysfunctional Meyer family with a dangerous mystical obsession. Living in Mile End, home to hipsters and Hasidic Jews, David, a professor of religion, is diagnosed with a heart murmur and becomes convinced that his heart is whispering divine secrets. When David’s attempts to ascend the Tree of Life lead to tragedy, his daughter Samara believes it is up to her to finish what he started, and her brother documents her increasingly strange behaviour. It falls to next-door neighbour Chaim Glassman to shatter the silence that divides the members of the Meyer family.
The winners will be announced on September 16th at a gala at the Hotel Arts in Calgary. To purchase tickets for the event, please visit www.bookpublishers.ab.ca
Congratulations to Wendi Stewart and Sigal Samuel, as well as to the other nominees!
To view the shortlists in all categories, visit http://bookpublishers.ab.ca/wp-content/uploads/2014/02/Media-Release-Shortlist-2016-Book-Publishing-Awards.pdf