You’re a history prof. Now all you need is a cape, unrequited passion, some heather.
But what happens if a real live hero walks into your life?
And he’s a professor of love.
You’ll never look at romance the same again.
And that may be a good thing.
Read it this weekend. Byron Rempel’s The Bodice Ripper.
Because romance is history.
Anna Hill is a McGill assistant professor of Medieval History and Gender on the eve of her 40th birthday. She specializes in the birth of romance. But after devoting decades of study to her subject, she craves an exotic romance of her own. When nobody steps up, she secretly crafts a bodice-ripping Harlequin set in Medieval Spain. But love soon takes on new meanings when a visiting Parisian professor wants to prove to her that romance is history.
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In Sons and Mothers, Mennonite men write about their mothers, and speak of the often close, but sometimes troubled, relationships that exist between mothers and sons. The collection includes stories of migration and its ripple effect on the next generation, of mothers whose idealistic notions of faith cause rifts, of aging mothers who resist moves to care homes, of mothers who live their dreams vicariously through their sons.
Sons of all ages and a variety of upbringings reflect on the relationships they had with their mothers. But they also show readers who their mothers were as younger women, and who they are today.
A book that speaks to the Mennonite community but also draws on universal themes, this book is a must-read for anyone wanting to delve deeper into this fundamental relationship.
With contributions from Byron Rempel, Paul Tiessen, Josiah Neufeld, Nathan Klippenstein, Lukas Thiessen, Christoff Engbrecht, Howard Dyck, Andrew Martin, Lloyd Ratzlaff, Michael Goertzen, John Rempel, Patrick Friesen.
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No Limits tells the previously undisclosed tale of Canada’s most decorated alpine skiers of all time. Decades before extreme sports, identical twins Rhona and Rhoda Wurtele were unstoppable, inseparable trailblazers not only for skiers, but also for women and Canadian sports. Today, they’re carving new trails for seniors in sports.
This engrossing book not only details the twins’ races down the slopes, but also the uphill battles they faced from the 1930s through to the 1970s. They already ski jumped by age 11 on Mount Royal. During a minus 36 degree snowstorm Rhoda came out first in the famed Taschereau race, beating all other women—and men—by a full 24 seconds. In 1948 the twins made up the entire Canadian Olympic women’s downhill ski team. Byron Rempel also uncovers the Wurtele’s disregard for barriers and limits, including their fight against the refusal to give them the top level ski instructor badges they earned, and in the 1960s, their push to get Westmount housewives out of the kitchen and onto the slopes.
Their fame brought them into contact with celebrities from Salvador Dali to Jackie Robinson, and got them an offer to play softball with the Chicago Peaches of A League of Their Own fame. But most important to them were their equally talented and dogged children, who blazed their own paths as modern dancers, ski acrobats, NHL stars and Hollywood stuntmen. Today in their 90s the twins continue to push boundaries, amazing and electrifying everyone active enough to keep up with them.
- No Limits won the prestigious International Skiing History Association’s Ullr Award for literature in 2008. The ISHA is based in Colorado and Vermont and has members in 72 countries.
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An elephant trainer in Italy, a writer-in-residence for an archaeological dig in Belize, and a theatre reviewer in Key West, Byron Rempel gets around. In his new book Truth is Naked, All Others Pay Cash, he reaches beyond established literary genres into uncharted territory. Whereas many novels are thinly disguised autobiography, Rempel believes it is much more interesting when we fictionalize our own lives. As proof he offers a post-modernist memoir, even though he isn’t sure what post-modernism means, never mind his own life.
Whether searching for the origins of pacifist Mennonites among murderers and polygamists, shovelling elephant droppings, or confronting the slow evaporation of his father’s brain, Rempel addresses the questions that haunt all of us: Where are we going, why, and what will it cost us, not including airport tax? The result is a collection of stories that are quite hilarious, often poignant and occasionally believable.
- A 2006 Globe & Mail Book of the Year pick
- Finalist Quebec Writers’ Federation Mavis Gallant Prize for Non-Fiction
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Cross the writing of Henry Miller with Douglas Coupland and the result is Byron Rempel’s exhilarating first novel, True Detective. Set in Montreal’s flourishing alternative scene, the story details the adventures of a sex-obsessed prairie expatriate who puts off getting a real job by enrolling in a mail-order private detective course. Hoping to create the perfect slacker gig for the ‘90s, our hero finds himself working harder than expected to solve various mysteries — including, to his alarm, the deeper mysteries of the human heart.
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