Articulate‘s January 2026 Roundup
by Margaret Tessman
Anna Maskerine
Beneath My Scars: Surviving Domestic Violence
Caitlin Press, April 2025
At the beginning of her memoir, Anna Maskerine writes, “There is medicine in sharing stories.” Beneath My Scars tells Maskerine’s own story of living in, enduring and finally leaving an abusive relationship. Blending a combination of anecdotes, dreams and poems, she explores her life with her abuser, finally breaking free from the relationship and moving from small-town Ontario to small-town B.C. with her wife and son.
Maskerine also examines the changes to the perception of domestic abuse within communities and the wider world, and the kinds of supports that are now available that she was unable to access in the 1980s and 1990s. According to Statistics Canada, “44% of women and girls who had ever been in an intimate partner relationship—or about 6.2 million women aged 15 and over—reported experiencing some kind of psychological, physical, or sexual abuse in the context of an intimate relationship in their lifetime.”
When Maskerine was approached by Nelson Community Services Society (NCSS) to create a transition house in Nelson, she was careful to first build relationships within the community with police and social service agencies. Maskerine worked as the executive director of the Aimee Beaulieu Transition House in Nelson from 1995 to 2022 and is the current director of NCSS.
Maskerine feels that it was important to tell her story so that other women can learn from her experiences. “It feels like a completion. It feels like I took what happened and did something with that. That felt meaningful for me and hopefully for other people.”
Michael A. Cone
Connecting the Kootenays: The Kootenay Lake Ferries. A Hundred Years of Service 1921–2020
Self-published, 2022
Michael Cone’s first book, Connecting the Kootenays, is the culmination of a lifetime of interest in the history of steam navigation on Kootenay Lake. “Starting at such a young age, I was fortunate to have met many elderly individuals who had worked on the sternwheelers and tugs on the lake, and many became lifelong friends over the years,” he says.
The primary motive for writing Connecting the Kootenays came from the realization that many of the retired ferry crew who had joined the ferry service after the Second World War were now in their 80s and early 90s. “If their stories about the diesel ferry service were not captured soon, that history would be lost. They were able to fill in so many details, that writing the book was relatively easy. Along the way, I’ve also compiled an extensive collection of photographs and other memorabilia that have been digitized and were used in my book and continue to be used today.”
Connecting the Kootenays is filled with plenty of first-hand stories from crew members and richly illustrated with photos. Cone continues to write newspaper and magazine articles, using his vast collection of source material. “My old notes (as bad as they are) have proven invaluable in providing detail about daily life on the steamers, tugs and ferries, that are not found in newspaper accounts and other materials available to younger researchers today.”
Connecting the Kootenays can be purchased through Maa Press, maapress.ca, or through book retailers throughout the Kootenays.
Greg Nesteroff
The King of Sandon: Murder, Myth, and the Man Behind B.C.’s Greatest Ghost Town
A Kütne Reader book, October 2025
West Kootenay historian and journalist Greg Nesteroff’s biography of John Morgan Harris is a book that was 20 years in the making. As Nesteroff researched Harris’s life, he uncovered more and more details and mysteries of a man he describes as “a mining magnate with a secret past and a complicated legacy.”
The King of Sandon traces Harris’s life from rural Virginia, where he was born into a family of slaveholders, to northern Idaho and to his arrival in the Slocan in early 1892, part of a wave of prospectors lured by a silver rush. Harris bought a promising mining claim and used his resulting fortune to build an entire city in the wilderness as a monument to himself. He owned the Sandon townsite, its principal buildings, power plant and waterworks.
When Sandon’s fortunes declined as the mines in the area played out, Harris, nicknamed the King of Sandon, refused to leave, even as his town crumbled around him. The book looks at how Sandon nearly faded from existence and was rediscovered by others determined to save what was left.
The book includes over 200 photos and illustrations as well as eight specially created maps. The King of Sandon is available for purchase in local stores and on the book’s companion website, kingofsandon.com, which also contains source notes, photo galleries, interviews and other special features.
Maddisun
The Pages
2025
The Pages is Cranbrook singer-songwriter Maddisun’s third studio album. The 12 tracks on the album can be listened to as a musical journal, in which every song is a page from Maddisun’s story. She describes the title tune, which was recorded at her home studio in Cranbrook, as a blend of “Sheryl Crow meets Maggie Rogers with pedal steel and soul.” Maddisun has been singing and performing since the age of 10 and has spent time honing her craft in Ireland and Los Angeles.
Maddisun made the decision to release The Pages on vinyl, CD and cassette before making it available to stream. She felt that the songs were made to be held in the hands of listeners for a slower, more intentional experience. Her expressive, country-flavoured alto is made in the mountains.
Sarah Louise Butler
Rufous and Calliope
Douglas & McIntyre, September 2025
Sarah Louise Butler’s second novel deals with maps, memory and treehouses, themes that may not at first glance seem to be related. She writes, “Growing up, I was always hearing about how much I resembled my maternal grandmother, who was afflicted with an unusual, early-onset form of dementia. The comparison left me with the irrational notion that I’ll suffer the same fate, and this novel grapples with reimagining that outcome in a way that is less terrifying and more whimsical…. This novel plays out my childhood conviction that, if anything were to happen to our parents, my brothers and sister and me would all run away and live together in a treehouse in the woods.”
Rufous Flanagan, a modern-day cartographer, embarks on a solo trek through an ancient mountain pass in search of the treehouse hideaway where he spent one memorable childhood summer on the run with his three older half-siblings and his twin sister, Calliope. Rufous must confront not only treacherous terrain, but the unravelling of his own mind. His memories become a map guiding him through towering forests, dry creek beds and smoke-filled skies. Echoes of the past lead Rufous on a journey that blurs the line between dream and reality. As the elements close in, this novel offers an unforgettable tale of survival, memory and the bond between siblings.
Sarah Louise Butler’s debut novel, The Wild Heavens, was published in 2020. She lives and writes in Nelson, B.C.
Elizabeth Oldham
Shadows on the Heart
Doppia Press, March 2025
Shadows on the Heart is Castlegar author Elizabeth Oldham’s second novel. Her first, Tail of Humanity, is told from the point of view of a dog named King. Oldham moves into human voices in this novel: Jade, a serious 12-year-old who is taken in by an incompetent aunt when her parents die; Evie, who hasn’t seen her daughter since she ran away 20 years earlier; and Lita, the daughter who never thought she’d see her mother again.
When her brother dies suddenly and she’s named legal guardian to three children she’s never met, Lita Bravo, a tattooed, 32-year-old amateur mixed martial arts fighter, leaves her high desert home in Arizona to drive to California, a place from which she ran away years ago. Upon her arrival, she finds not only three grieving children but her estranged mother who has dementia and nowhere else to go.
Elizabeth Oldham has been writing all her life. She loves writing fiction because she can create new worlds and characters that transport readers out of the here and now. Elizabeth has a B.A. in English with an emphasis on creative writing, and a Master of Social Science in International Rural and Community Development. She has lived and worked all over the world but now resides in the Kootenays with her husband, 14 chickens and a crazed rescue dog.
Hanna Sandvig
The Frost Gate: A Retelling of Snow White
Phouka Publishing, June 2025
The Frost Gate is the fifth book in the Faerie Tale Romance series by Castlegar-based author Hanna Sandvig. The young adult novels are cosy fantasy-fairytale retellings where portals to the Faerie realm are hidden in the forests of the Kootenays. Each story includes magic, adventure, humour and a family-friendly romance. Sandvig was an illustrator before becoming an author, and the books are filled with maps, story illustrations, beautiful chapter headers and more. While the books are written for teens, they are loved by adults and even some younger readers who don’t mind a little kissing in their books.
The Frost Gate is the latest addition to the series and retells Snow White, but in a way you’ve never heard it before. What if Snow White didn’t know she was a Faerie princess and just wanted to raise her seven chickens and bake apples pies in peace? Everything is going just fine until a grumpy huntsman burst into her kitchen:
“The longer I stay in Faerie, the more I want to help its people. And the more time I spend with the terrifyingly handsome huntsman, the more I want to convince him that he’s who I need by my side while I do. He’d do anything to protect me, but it’s my heart he’s putting in danger. Do I have what it takes to go from baking pies to saving kingdoms? Who will take care of the chickens if I fail?”
Signed books are available at the Kootenay Gallery of Art in Castlegar as part of their Christmas at the Gallery shop.
