Tent of Blue, Rachael Preston's richly conceived first novel, seduces readers with images of captivity and escape. Passing back and forth through time, the novel has its beginnings in England before and during the Second World War. The present is a somewhat seedy mansion-turned-apartment in Vancouver's Shaughnessy neighbourhood and the beaches of Kitsilano and Jericho in the 1950s. The future, or at least the fantasy, is the unattainable Salt Spring Island. In this astonishing novel, Preston creates characters that are trapped by cruelty, poverty, war, and their own minds and bodies. Gradually they awaken to the fact that they carry within themselves the possibility of freedom and the power to achieve it. The novel's images of war-torn beaches, cold, dank theatres, and travelling by bicycle through the streets of Vancouver will linger with readers long after the book is closed. The book tells the story of Anton, a boy of almost sixteen, who suffers the challenges of a clubfoot and Yvonne, his mother, a dance teacher who spent her youth in the decayed music halls of 1930s England. Grotesquely mistreated by her drunken mother, fourteen-year-old Yvonne finds fleeting freedom with a Russian-born dancer. After his death, needing to provide for herself and Anton, she falls into the grip of a brutal impresario and eventually migrates to Montreal and shortly thereafter to Vancouver. Yvonne alternately spurns and smothers her son as she plays the only two roles she knows: victim and victimizer. Both have been imprisoned their whole lives: Yvonne by her fear of her abusive mother, of losing her lover, and of Harold, the man who sweeps her into his control and makes her his wife. Anton has been a prisoner of his physical handicap, of Yvonne's unhappiness, and of Harold's hold on both his and his mother's life. In their Vancouver apartment, Yvonne and Anton struggle to live heroically despite the scathing violence of love. Yvonne opens a dance school where she teaches her few ballet students. Anton struggles for respect and independence and finds a measure of freedom through his wheelchair and apartment bound neighbour, Tom Hart, a World War I vet, who supplies Anton with an old bicycle. Anton tries to return the favour in the only way that he can imagine. Dickensian in its complexity, Tent of Blue marks the career debut of a fascinating new Canadian writer.

Tent of Blue

Literature & Fiction

Preston, Rachael

Contemporary

Goose Lane Editions

In 1930s Hamilton, the boathouse community of Cootes Paradise is under siege: the squatters' shacks that line the shores of Dundas Marsh stand in the way of ambitious plans to make the city beautiful. Egypt Fisher and her mother are struggling to keep their lives together in the absence of her father, a con man neither of them has seen for six years. Into this mix walks a handsome drifter and the family falls under his spell, until Egypt’s father unexpectedly returns. Unhinged by jealousy and a harrowing brush with the local mafia, he reveals a family secret that sets Egypt's world off-kilter and poisons her relationship with her mother. When Egypt tries to turn the situation to her own advantage, her lies set in motion a series of events with devastating consequences.

The Fishers of Paradise

Genre Fiction

James Street North Books

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Books by Preston, Rachael