Books published by L'Aleph

"Is this Heaven's cloud I sleep on is why my eyes see only white hazy shadowsAre you saints floating here?Stop your flight, fair silent beings!Come closer so that I might know your strange faces!"The customized Cessna jet aircraft Sheila Stoffel is piloting experiences technical meltdown and crashes into rocky terrain mere miles from her hometown of Soleil. Horrifically injured beyond recognizable, Sheila is airlifted to the hospital where a team of specialists gather led by reconstructive surgeon, Christophe Thomas, MD.Sheila wakens in ICU mechanically ventilated and immobile swathed in plaster casts trying to make sense of her surroundings, physical condition and state of mind as she tries to associate words spoken in conversations between the faces passing over her across the only horizon she sees; the ceiling.Four former high school friends are reunited in an event none of them could possibly have planned.The Canadian-born author was raised without television and educated back and forth across the provinces between Vancouver and Toronto in one-room school-houses and the largest city campuses by an educator-mother possessed with a wanderlust spirit. Jeanette Skirvin, BSc. RDH (Loma Linda University School of Dentistry) resides by the seaside in California.

Police are called to a dark home when neighbors spot an abandoned naked child banging his fists against the windowpane during a thunderstorm's lightning flash. The child known simply as Rollins by way of the police report is delivered to the stone fortress that is Holy Father's House of Lambs Found where he is settled into the shelter of young Sister Elizabeth's arms. The chief of police tries to reassure Monsignor Philippe the child's stay is only for the night until its parents are found and charged with child endangerment but Monsignor knows that closer to the truth is Rollins' stay will be far longer as he grows behind the walls among the orphans and salvaged abused discards until he comes of an age and is turned out...The Canadian-born author was raised without television and educated back and forth across the provinces between Vancouver and Toronto in tiny one-room schoolhouses and the largest city campuses by an educator-mother possessed with a wanderlust spirit. Jeanette Skirvin, BSc. RDH (Loma Linda University School of Dentistry) resides by the seaside in California.

Christophe's eyes behold whiteness everywhere he looks.Snowflakes falling from a white sky drift into brilliant banks covering lawn and field. Forest floors and mountain peaks slumber beneath snow deep as an eiderdown quilt. Rooftops silently uphold white bunting like royal heads bearing ermine-trimmed crowns. Smoky puffs escaping hearths' inferno billow through chimneys to find swift relief in snowfall's embrace. Frozen sidewalks winding onward escort streets lying-in-state wear their own shades of white. Even chevron tracks left by cars' winter tires differentiate contrasting high and low depths imprinted on roadways' snowy luster leaving behind impressions resembling long sterling silver chain-link necklaces winding through the frosty-white neighborhood that is Soleil.The horizon is probably white too, if I could only see it!Worldly bachelor, Hermes Thomas and his nephew, Christophe, orphan son of his brother and Madeleine (Hermes' secret obsession) are brought to vibrant new light by way of scintillating girl, Sheila whose gentle actions ravel the quiet side of Healing.The Canadian-born author was raised without television and educated across the provinces between Vancouver and Toronto in one-room schoolhouses and largest city campuses by an educator-mother possessed with a wanderlust spirit. Jeanette Skirvin, BSc. RDH resides by the seaside in California.By the same author, published by Elementá "Jaguar Ravenz King" and "Rollins of Stone House"

Winner of the Canada Book AwardsThe year is 1957. Though they were from a wealthy and well-respected family, Najma’s parents decided to marry off her sister at the age of nine. While crying for her and pitying her, Najma knew little that she would be next. Six years later, eleven-year-old Najma is resentful and unforgiving because her parents married her off at age 11. But the harshest moment of her life is when she inadvertently shapes a similar destiny for her daughter Jaleh.Being a child bride, Najma suffers through all forms of abuse before she can convince her violent husband that she deserves better and would continue her education regardless of his beating. But life the way she knows it changes forever when a revolution happens and an Islamic group takes control of the Iranian government in 1979. Mass arrests and execution of the opposition frightens Najma and her husband who have to make a decision to save her ‘too-curious’ daughter from a brutal government. Climbing Over Grit follows the odyssey of Najma’s family winding through the dangerous Bousher-Shiraz roads, during the eight-year war with Iraq, recounting the story of a family that has to pay a huge price for having made a mistake while trying to protect a loved one.