Books by Theresa Kishkan

Letters, photographs, a program from a concert by Madame Albani, a buckskin jacket, clippings about the Bill Miner gang -- mementos found by a museum curator organizing a display about central British Columbia a century ago. Infused with the spirit clinging to these personal treasures, Anna reconstructs the life of their owner, Margaret Stuart. On the cusp of womanhood, Margaret is drawn by opposites: the Nicola Valley ranchland, the horses, and her native grandmother's traditions on one side, the luxuries sent by her American relatives an the new art of photography on the other. Anna's and Margaret's lives entwine, the past reverberates through the present, and their shared rituals and turning points create a universal pattern of beauty.

A wanderer arrives by chance on Inishbream, a rocky dot in the sea just off the west coast of Ireland. A lover of boats and a strong worker, she soon marries Sean, the young owner of her stone cottage. For a time, she does her woman's work, fishes with her husband, and walks along the shore, imagining Saint Brendan and the invisible world so real to the islanders. Through the winter, she repays Inishbream storytellers with tales of coastal British Columbia, not so very different, after all, from their own. Inishbream conjures relationships between the newcomer and her husband, between the island people, the sea, and the land, and between the coastal landscapes of reality and imagination. In the uneasy peace of partial acceptance, a young woman starts to envision her own place in the world.

With The Age of Water Lilies, Theresa Kishkan has written a beautiful novel that travels from the time of colonial wars to the pacifist movement to 1960s Victoria, and shares a unique and delightful relationship between 70-year-old Flora and 7-year-old Tessa. When Flora Oakden leaves her English home in 1912 for the fledgling community of Walhachin in British Columbia''s interior, she doesn''t expect to fall in love with the dry sage-scented benchlands above the Thompson River-and with the charismatic labourer who is working in the orchard. When he and all the men of Walhachin return to Europe and the battlefields of France, Flora remains behind, pregnant and unmarried. Shunned by those remaining in the settlement, she travels west to Victoria and meets freethinker Ann Ogilvie, who provides shelter for her in a house overlooking the Ross Bay Cemetery. Fifty years later, among the headstones of Ross Bay, curious young Tessa is mapping her own personal domain when her life becomes interwoven with that of her neighbour, the now-elderly Flora. Out of their friendship, a larger world opens up for these unlikely companions. Theresa has written a sweeping story that transcends time and springs from a passionate exploration of the natural world, its weather, seasons and plants.