In the spring of 1906, under cover of darkness, lovestruck sixteen-year-old Will Ingram crept from his Missouri farm after a violent confrontation with his father. So began an epic, eight-year journey of mishap and misadventure as young Will "rode the rails," working his way across the American Midwest. Bronc busting, trick riding, and roping with Buffalo Bill at Oklahoma's 101 Ranch and Wild West show, running a locomotive engine off the track in Kansas, and drinking, gambling, and gold-panning up at Cripple Creek, Colorado, before eventually settling on an Alberta homestead.
His children knew little about their father's past, and almost nothing of those eight lost years. Luckily, in 1914, he wrote it all down. Reading the Air is a granddaughter's tribute to a grandfather rediscovered through poetry. Brenda Gunn reads between the lines to reimagine the extraordinary tale of a seemingly ordinary man, inspired by a poem he wrote and found the courage to share.
Language
Product notice
Paperback (trade)
Unsewn / adhesive bound
Dimensions
Height: 216 mm
Width: 140 mm
Thickness: 10 mm
Weight
ISBN-13
978-1-997770-13-8 (9781997770138)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Brenda Gunn resumed two passions-creative writing and family history-when she retired in 2017 after more than thirty years teaching elementary and special education with Edmonton Public Schools. Brenda's first ever submission won the Parkland Poets' 2019 Haiku contest and was painted on the sidewalk outside Stony Plain City Hall, and her most recent prose poem is featured on the back of a beer can!Since she completed a certificate in creative writing with the University of Toronto, Brenda's poems have won the Polar Expressions and Dr. William Henry Drummond national poetry contests, and appear in local, national and international journals and anthologies, including South Africa's Quilled Ink Review; Human to Human Pandemic Anthology, UK; tsaunders publications, UK; POETRYXHUNGER online; the San Francisco Creative Writing Institute's Dispatches from Quarantine, Canadian Stories; and the Edmonton Public Library's Capital City Press. Two collections were long listed for the Palette Poetry and Meadowlark Books Birdy chapbook prizes, and Brenda's full-length collection, Florilegia, twice charted on the Audreys Books Edmonton weekly poetry bestseller list after its release in 2024.Brenda is a member of the Writer's Union of Canada, the League of Canadian Poets, the Ontario Poetry Society, the Alberta and Saskatchewan Writer's Guilds, Parkland Poets and the Edmonton Stroll of Poets.
