Resurrection of Joseph Bourne, The: Or a Word or Two on Those Port Annie Miracles - Softcover

Hodgins, Jack

Softcover

ISBN 10: 155380239X ISBN 13: 9781553802396

Publisher: Ronsdale Press, 2013

Synopsis

Fiction. In this new edition of Jack Hodgins' Governor General-winning novel (for 1979), the reader is taken into the everyday eccentricities of life in Port Annie on the west coast of Vancouver Island, a town that keeps slipping into the ocean and whose people have long been in a continuous slumber. Everything changes, however, when a beautiful sea nymph is washed ashore from a stranded freighter. People begin grasping at new possibilities. There's the giant cactus the mayor installs to attract the tourist trade, the personal life of Jenny Chambers, ex-stripper, is exposed, and the Kick-and-Kill beer parlor becomes home to wild events. But there is also Joseph Bourne himself, once a world-renowned poet and healer, who has become a bitter recluse. Bourne knows that the endless rain is going to bring a landslide down on the town, and he fears that the mysterious woman has come looking for him. In the end he dies and is resurrected—an experience that allows him to regain his healing powers so that he can work his magic on the townsfolk. With his energetic style and his comic characterization, Hodgins combines the ordinary with the wondrous.

About this title

From the Inside Flap

When an unknown woman steps off a beached Peruvian freighter and walks into the Vancouver Island town of Port Annie, nothing can ever be quite the same. Stalwart citizens, tired of their milltown routine, grasp at a fresh subject for gossip. Others are suddenly prepared to make momentous decisions. But eccentric old Joseph Bourne, who knows that the endless rain is going to bring a landslide down on the town, is certain that the mysterious woman has come looking for him.
Jack Hodgins' comic masterpiece is filled with social satire, and it is also filled with love, which permits this ordinary town to recollect the past with affection, and to begin its history again.
First published in 1979, "The Resurrection of Joseph Bourne won the Governor General's Award for Fiction.

About the Author

Jack Hodgins was raised in Merville, on Vancouver Island, and graduated from the University of British Columbia. Until recently, he taught fiction writing at the University of Victoria. His novels and story collections include: THE RESURRECTION OF JOSEPH BOURNE (2013), THE BARCLAY FAMILY THEATRE (2012), SPIT DELANEY'S ISLAND (2011), THE INVENTION OF THE WORLD (2010), The Master of Happy Endings (2010), Innocent Cities (1990), Broken Ground (1998), Distance (2003) and Damage Done by the Storm (2004). A Passion for Narrative: A Guide to Writing Fiction (2001) is used in classrooms and writing groups across Canada and Australia. Hodgins' fiction has won the Governor General's Award, the Canada-Australia Prize, the Commonwealth Prize (Canada and the Caribbean), and the Ethel Wilson Fiction Prize, amongst others. He has given readings, talks, and workshops in Australia, New Zealand, Japan, and several European countries, and he has taught an annual fiction workshop in Mallorca, Spain. In 2006 he received both the Terasen Lifetime Achievement Award and the Lieutenant Governor's Award for Literary Excellence in British Columbia. In 2009 the Governor General appointed him a Member of the Order of Canada. He and his wife Dianne have three grown children and three grandchildren.

About this edition

• Publisher: Ronsdale Press
• Publication date: 2013
• ISBN 10: 155380239X
• ISBN 13: 9781553802396
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 300