Dropped Threads 2: More of What We Aren't Told

Continuing in the tradition of the beloved first volume, Dropped Threads 2: More of What We Aren’t Told taps into women’s compelling need to share their personal reflections on life’s defining moments of surprise and silence. These stories celebrate the female experience with an honesty and intimacy that will take your breath away. Readers will explore what may be unfamiliar terrain, and will come away with the powerful knowledge of what it must be like to step into another woman’s shoes. “The fact is,” writes Adrienne Clarkson in the foreword, “none of us knows anything, and it is what happens to us in life that teaches us everything.” Carol Shields and Marjorie Anderson, with the assistance of Carol’s daughter Catherine, have gathered an astounding collection of fresh, beautifully crafted and original pieces by well-known Canadians, including Jane Urquhart, Susan Swan, Shelagh Rogers, Michele Landsberg, Elizabeth Hay, Billie Livingston, Sandra Martin and Flora MacDonald. As with the first book, this volume also includes contributions from new writers, women whose names you may not recognize but whose stories will resonate, move and inspire.

Table of Contents:
Contents Adrienne Clarkson, Foreword Marjorie Anderson, Introduction End Notes Jane Urquhart — Losing Paul: A Memoir Alison Wearing — My Life as a Shadow Mary Jane Copps — In My Mother's Arms Lisa Majeau Gordon — An Exercise in Fertility Billie Livingston — Cat Bag Shirley Serviss — One Step Forward Pamela Mala Sinha — Hiding Dana McNairn — A Marriage in Seven Parts Lisa Gregoire — Northern Lights and Darkness Variations Maggie Dwyer — Like Mother, Like Daughter Sandra Martin — Snapshots Barbara Defago — Inside Talking Linda Harlos — The Fall, and After Hildegard Martens — By Choice Marianne Brandis — Virgin Crone Faith Johnston — Debonding Sarah Harvey — Mother Interrupted C.J. Papoutsis — They Didn't Come with Instructions Glimpses Ingeborg Boyens — On the Water's Edge Mary J. Breen — Nobody Needs to Know Jennifer L. Schulz — Toe-Ring Debbie Culbertson — A Place on the Pavement Wanda Wuttunee — We Are More Than Our Problems Linda Rogers — Bettina's Hat Michele Landsberg — Don't Say Anything Susan Swan — My Secret Life as a Mother Nourishment Karen Houle — Double Arc Elizabeth Hay — Ten Beauty Tips You Never Asked For Carole Sabiston — Conjuring Up a New Life Flora MacDonald — New Voices Sandra Beardsall — Life with an Overeager Conscience Sandra Birdsell — One of a Bunch Maude Barlow — The Coat I Left Behind Ann Dowsett Johnston — The Boy Can't Sleep Shelagh Rogers — Speaking of Dying Carol Shields, Afterword

About the Author :
Born in Oak Park, Illinois, in 1935, Carol Shields moved to Canada at the age of twenty-two, after studying at the University of Exeter in England, and then obtained her M.A. at the University of Ottawa. She started publishing poetry in her thirties, and wrote her first novel, Small Ceremonies, in 1976. Over the next three decades, Shields would become the author of over twenty books, including plays, poetry, essays, short fiction, novels , a book of criticism on Susanna Moodie and a biography of Jane Austen. Larry's Party (1997) was the novel that followed her Pulitzer-Prize-winning The Stone Diaries. Published in several countries, it was adapted into a musical stage play, won England’s Orange Prize (now the Women's Prize), given to the best book by a woman writer in the English-speaking world. Shields’s final novel, Unless, was shortlisted for the Booker, Orange and Giller prizes and the Governor General’s Literary Award, and won the Ethel Wilson Prize for Fiction. Shields died on July 16, 2003, from complications of breast cancer, at age 68. Marjorie Anderson met Carol Shields in the 1980s when both were teaching at the University of Manitoba. She is the seventh of eight children born to Asdis and Thorsteinn Anderson, Icelandic-Canadian fishers, farmers and storytellers from the hamlet of Libau on the edges of Lake Winnipeg. She has a PhD in literature and taught for seven years in the English department at the University of Manitoba before moving to the School of Business, where she became director of the communications programs for commerce and MBA students. She was awarded the university’s Achievement Award for Excellence in Teaching, and has taught in international programs. She recently gave up full-time teaching to spend more time on literary projects and continues to run a communication consultancy for academic and corporate clients. She and her husband live in Winnipeg and enjoy spending time with their four daughters and several grandchildren. Anderson's lifelong interest in writing and storytelling, and her involvement in editing and teaching over two decades, made the task of editing Dropped Threads and Dropped Threads 2 a comfortable one. She describes her collaboration with her friend Carol Shields as a great pleasure.

Review :
Praise for Dropped Threads: “There are exciting and truly intimate entries in this book . . . these women take ideas even secret ones, and infuse them with poetry, scoured and buffed sentences and . . . stopwatch comic timing. . . . The true depth of the collection is found in these women’s clear memories and their willingness to share.” —Quill & Quire “It’s a collection of revealing essays and short stories by 35 Canadian women at mid-life and beyond, reflecting on the life events that caught them off guard and, somehow, haven’t been talked about. . . . As it turns out, there are many dropped threads in our lives. Weave them together and you’ve got a tapestry.” —Chatelaine “Dropped Threads is a collection of 34 pieces by Canadian women in which they describe . . . everything they never said or were not able to say before, but which had tremendous power in their lives. . . . [Senator Sharon Carstairs’s] essay about women in politics [is] clear-eyed and devastating. . . . Miriam Toews examines her father’s lifelong battle with depression, which culminated in his suicide . . . with gentleness and insight. . . . These are all the conversations we would wish to have with friends and these essays stimulate the sense of exuberance and relief that one always feels after a long, self-revelatory talk.” —Halifax Chronicle-Herald “Dropped Threads is a much-awaited anthology of essays and stories by Canadian women, including celebrated writers as well as women who are neither writers nor famous. . . . The angst of the women in Dropped Threads covers a wide spectrum.” —Ottawa Citizen “If the value of books were measured by the insights stored within their pages, Dropped Threads would be priceless. . . . [This] is a wonderfully well-written and excellently edited book that offers such intimate insights that it sometimes seems like a stream of consciousness. The compositions frequently make the reader feel like an eavesdropper—and an extremely entertained one at that. . . . The stories in Dropped Threads cathartically tie up loose ends for their writers, while providing readers with an exquisitely crafted patchwork quilt of life experiences.” —Winnipeg Free Press