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Biography of Katherine Govier, currently Director , The Shoe Project at the Bata Shoe Museum, previously Novelist; travel writer; lecturer at Self employed. and Novelist; travel writer; lecturer at Self employed.
Oei is the daughter of the great Japanese printmaker Hokusai. Long consigned to a minor role as gloomy sidekick, she is barely a footnote in the historical record. Here, Oei recounts her life with one of the great eccentrics of the 19th century. Dodging the Shogun's spies, she and Hokusai live amongst actors, novelists, tattoo artists and prostitutes, making the exquisite pictures that define their time. Disguised, they escape the city gates to view waves and Mount Fuji. But they return to enchanting, dangerous Edo (Tokyo), the largest city in the world. Wielding her brush, Oei defies all expectations of womanhood-- all but one. She is dutiful until death to the exasperating father who created her and, ultimately, steals her future. A breathtaking work of imagination, The Ghost Brush illuminates the most tender and ambiguous love of all--that between father and daughter.
""In a life so well-documented, these next few months form a rare gap. It is as if the dark cloud and fog Audubon sails into transcends mere weather, and becomes a state of mind. As if Labrador itself (or its weather) swallows the story."" His need to capture the fugitive colours of birds pushed John James Audubon into impossible places, none more dangerous than the fog-ridden coast of Labrador in the summer of 1833. In mesmerizing prose, novelist Katherine Govier explores this fateful summer in the life of a man as untamed as his subjects. Running two steps ahead of the bailiff, alternately praised and reviled by critics, John James Audubon set himself the audacious task of drawing, from na...
Oei is the daughter of the great Japanese printmaker Hokusai. Long consigned to a minor role as gloomy sidekick, she is barely a footnote in the historical record. In The Ghost Brush, Oei recounts her life with one of the great eccentrics of the 19th century. Dodging the Shogun’s spies, she and Hokusai live amongst actors, novelists, tattoo artists and prostitutes, making the exquisite pictures that define their time. Wielding her brush, Oei defies all expectations of womanhood but one—she is dutiful until death to the exasperating father who created her and, ultimately, steals her future. Vera Lowinger Drew is the last of a pearling dynasty. When she is left motherless, her only refuge ...
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A landmark novel of the Canadian West from one of Canada’s most accomplished writers, author of The Ghost Brush and Fables of Brunswick Avenue Gateway, Alberta, 1911. The coming of the railroad to the Canadian Rockies has brought a parade of newcomers to the heavenly Bow Valley—climbers, coal miners, artists, scientists, runaway aristocrats and remittance men. Among the latter is the poacher Herbie Wishart, who arrived on a one-way ticket and has reinvented himself as a trail guide and teller of tall tales. Herbie becomes outfitter for a fossil-hunting expedition headed by a prominent Washington, D.C., archaeologist. Rumours say that the findings of the secrecy-shrouded Hodgson expeditio...
A New York Times Notable book about Audubon’s voyage to capture Birds of America is a “brilliantly insightful and ravishingly sensuous tale of adventure.” (Booklist) In this atmospheric and enthralling novel, Katherine Govier tells the story of the world's greatest living bird artist as he finally understands the paradox embedded in his art: that the act of creation is also an act of destruction. Running two steps ahead of the bailiff, alternately praised and reviled, John James Audubon set himself the audacious task of drawing, from nature, every bird in North America. The result was his masterpiece, The Birds of America. In June 1833, partway through his mission, he enlisted his son,...
Stories of journeys by known and unknown authors including Margaret Attwood and E. Annie Proulx, Robyn Davidson.
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