The Secret of the Northern Lights - Softcover

Kinsella, W.P.

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1895449855 ISBN 13: 9781895449853

Publisher: Thistledown Press, 1998

Synopsis

The Secret of the Northern Lights continues the chronicle which has delighted thousands and outraged a select few since Silas Ermineskin first appropriated the English language in 1977 with Dance Me Outside.

About this title

About the Author

One of Canada's most renowned and beloved writers, W. P. Kinsella continues to delight and mesmerize his readers with twelve new Hobbema stories in The Secret of the Northern Lights. This collection follows in the footsteps of his classic titles Dance Me Outside, Shoeless Joe, Born Indian, and The Fencepost Chronicles. Born in Edmonton, Alberta, and currently residing in British Columbia, Kinsella is known for his compelling insight and dazzling wit, while the translation of his work into such films as Field of Dreams, Dance Me Outside, and Lieberman in Love have made him an internationally recognized figure.

Kinsella is the winner of the following awards: Houghton Mifflin Literary Fellowship; Books in Canada First Novel Award; Stephen Leacock Medal for Humour; Canada Authors Association Prize for Fiction; Order of Canada, Periodical Marketers Award.

From the Back Cover

The Secret of the Northern Lights continues the chronicle which has delighted thousands and outraged a select few since Silas Ermineskin first appropriated the English language in 1977 in Dance Me Outside. As part of his apprenticeship to Mad Etta, medicine woman on the Ermineskin reserve, Silas learns a whole bunch of inside information and shares it with us. I learned that everybody got a past that can be used against them, Etta tells him. But, more interesting I learned that if you haven't got a past that can be used against you, you haven't lived enough to be any use to anybody.

When he's out on the road with Brother Frank Fencepost, the Trickster incarnate, we join a slapstick First Nations tour through the follies of our culture. Sacred white buffalo get kidnapped and cloned, Levantine radicals are provided with Ermineskin identities, and Frank and Silas represent the Nation of Hobbema at the Commonwealth Games.

Humour, as always, is the leveler. Nothing is taken too seriously, nothing is sacred. Yet serious, even tragic, things do happen and sacred things are accomplished, while Kinsella -- as if incidentally--twists a skewer again and again through the cant, sentimentality and glib indignations of political correctness.

The Secret of the Northern Lights is certain to challenge and delight, as well as enlighten.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

From Bleaching the Buffalo

Back at the parking lot, Frank having a certain amount of difficulty. The buffalo have a definite mind of his own, set his heart on traveling backwards. He got the rope taut, his neck stretched out so we can see all his tendons, and he is inching the trailer across the lot.

He don't aim to go back in the trailer, says Frank.

I tell Frank about Miss Crystal's Beauty Salon.

We could drive the truck, let the truck pull the trailer, let the trailer pull the buffalo. Or, we could both of us take the halter rope and try to lead the buffalo ourselves.

We decide the two of us can lead him.

He is one frisky buffalo. He has a way of going sideways about as much as he goes forward. Also, for whatever reason, he like to walk on the sidewalk not on the street. Every time a truck rumble by, the buffalo pick up speed, even though both Frank's and my boots are making black stripes on the sidewalk, the kind air planes make when they touch down on a runway.

We are about half way to Miss Crystal's when a police car pull up alongside us.

I bet there's probably a reason you're walking a buffalo down the street, says the cop, who is young and not likely acquainted with many buffalo.

What kind of reason would you believe? asks Frank.

Try me.

He ain't stolen, I say, which may not have been the best thing I could of said.

We're bringing him into town for an appointment at the big rodeo and pow-wow next week. This here is Ferdinand, the world's only tap dancing buffalo. We're giving him his exercise and taking him to a beauty parlor, where he gonna get shampooed and curled, tied with red ribbons and sprayed with perfume. You want to see him do a couple of steps? If you was to whistle 'Home on the Range,' he'd waltz right across the street with you.

What beauty salon? says the cop, figure he's caught us in a lie.

Miss Crystal's Beauty Salon, I say, next door to Pete's Cafe, by the Nothing Over a Dollar Store.

He look at us with narrowed eyes. As long as you keep him on a leash and out of traffic, I can't see you're breaking any law. I'll drop by Crystal's in a few minutes to make sure you're telling the truth.

He's the only buffalo in the world can polka, says Frank. Used to appear with Weird Al Yankovic, before that Lawrence Welk. Bring your accordion to the beauty shop.

Edition details

• Publisher: Thistledown Press
• Publication date: 1998
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1895449855
• ISBN 13: 9781895449853
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 2
• Number of pages: 200