CanadianContent discussion

I5: A book set during a holiday

Anyone got some non-Christmas suggestions??

Ami McKay's last book...

I'm really struggling with this square. I'd like to get creative with it and maybe read something set on a holiday like Canada Day or MLK Day. Or maybe over Labour Day or Victoria Day weekend. If anyone has any ideas or suggestions, I'd love to hear them.

• Feast of Lights is set during Hanukkah
• Still Life is set during Thanksgiving
• Bury Your Dead is set during Quebec's Winter Carnival
• The Cruelest Month is set around Easter

Oh thank you, Allison! I've been struggling with this square...!

Oh thank you, Allison! I have really been struggling with this square!

I'm struggling with this square too. I feel like I'll end up reading something Christmasy due to a lack of other options.

If you want something different maybe try Strange Heaven by Lynn Coady as the story takes place over the Christmas holidays. I'd enjoyed her writing previously and thought I'd give it a try. Can’t say that I loved the book but it definitely isn’t a run-of-the-mill seasonal story. There are lots of quirky characters as well. It’s a combination sad-funny book that I sometimes still think about.

Louis Riel is celebrated as a holiday in Manitoba. There are a number of books about him by Canadian authors. Chester Brown's Louis Riel: A Comic-Strip Biography looks interesting. Joseph Boyden has also written a book entitled Louis Riel and Gabriel Dumont

A few years ago I read Cold Mourning by Brenda Chapman that takes place in Ottawa where she lives. It’s the first book in the Stonechild and Roleau mystery series. It’s a police procedural with good characters as well.

This probably isn’t what you were thinking about for a holiday in Canada but The Cremation of Sam McGee comes to a climax on Christmas. The historical novel is set during the 1898 gold rush and is inspired by the Robert W. Service poem:

On a Christmas Day we were mushing our way over the Dawson trail.
Talk of your cold! through the parka's fold it stabbed like a driven nail.
If our eyes we'd close, then the lashes froze till sometimes we couldn't see;
It wasn't much fun, but the only one to whimper was Sam McGee.

The novel has a bromance, a romance, and an unreliable narrator.