Satin Shoes step into the future with a ghost
Writer/Artist Loreena Lee displays the first copy of her new book.
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Updated: June 10, 2009 11:24 PM
Loreena Lee is anxiously awaiting a new arrival. Her publisher has promised safe delivery of her latest brain child, Satin Shoes, in time for her book launch at Newton Library on June 13 from 2 to4pm.
“I’ve been working on this novel for 50 years,” she jokes surveying the flourishing Cloverdale garden she and husband designed.
Lee explains that her novel weaves hints of her own childhood into a fantasy which she hopes will appeal to readers between the ages of 8 to 14 years of age, while triggering nostalgic memories in adults.
Lee has conjured up 12-year-old Leanne who, after relocating to a British Columbia logging town with her family, discovers her home is shared with Eliza, the ghost of a former resident.
Does the key to helping Eliza ‘cross over’ lie with a forlorn pair of satin shoes? Or, with Dixie, the crusty old neighbour who knows about ghosts, who befriends the lonely child.
The tale unfolds surrounded by a sprinkling of delightful sketches inked by the talented writer-cum-artist.
Lee hopes the nostalgia will have cross-generation appeal.
Lee knows northern logging towns well.
She describes her own mother as a generous, eccentric, energetic camp cook who led a nomadic existence.
“I get many of my abilities from my mother,” Lee says while explaining that she is also working on a cookbook dedicated to her mother-in-law, Kay Chwiendacz.
“My mother-in-law inspired me to ‘play’ with food,” she says of Chwiendacz who will celebrate her 100th birthday this August.
With a working title of “Playing with Food”, the book will be a compilation of traditional recipes garnished with travel tales and favourite family fables.
“It’s not just a chicken recipe book!” she warns.
Lee, a signature member of the Federation of Canadian Artists, recalls being an artist and reader all her life.
Familiar with most mediums, she particularly enjoys working in pen and ink. This ability adds a charming additional dimension to the text of Satin Shoes.
With a book of memoirs also underway, she is upset about the Surrey Continuing Education’s cancellation of the Surrey Writers’ Diploma Course.
“People need night school,” she says emphatically.
“These courses were about community, helping yourself, and sharing knowledge. I’ve been taking, or teaching, night classes since the ‘60s. It’s not about the money—it’s much more. It’s hard work to get your stuff out there,” she says crediting diploma course founder, Ed Griffin, and Rainwriters Critique and Langley Writers’ Groups with much of her success.
“Thirty years ago I tried to find any kind of writing course. There was very little. This one catapulted many people into their writing careers. Now it’s gone.”
While I admire sketches of personality-plus dragons sporting floppy runners, or lounging around with a good book, this great-grandmother confesses, “I now paint pictures with words, and embellish the text with illustrations.”
Her sketches, paintings and writing can be viewed on-line at www.dragonwing.bc.ca.
You can also meet her at the Satin Shoes book launch on June 13 in Newton.
editor@cloverdalereporter.com
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