Literary fiction author Dora Dueck has released another book.
Return Stroke: essays & memoir was launched June 2 in Winnipeg through her publisher CMU Press. A week later she hosted a small launch in Delta, where she located to in 2016.
The book’s title, Return Stroke—the title of one essay, where it literally refers to lightning—suggests such a dynamic.
“When I send inquiry into my past, it sends something back to me,” says Dueck in a press release describing the book. “How wonderful, that our “bits of existence, no matter how ordinary, are available for further consideration—seeing patterns, facing into inevitable death, enjoying the playful circularity of then and now.”
The topic of memory, in all its malleability, impermanence, and surprising power, is especially central to the collection’s concluding piece, an absorbing memoir of the author’s 1980s life in the Paraguayan Chaco. Whether she is discovering the more meaningful part that imagination holds within her religious faith or relating with astonishing clarity and honesty the experience of giving birth away from her home country, Dueck’s beautifully written essays and memoir make her an insightful and generous companion.
Dueck grew up in a Mennonite community in Alberta, and lived in Winnipeg for nearly 40 years before relocating to Delta.
Dueck is the author of four books of fiction, All That Belongs (2019), What You Get At Home (2013), This Hidden Thing (2010), and Under the Still Standing Sun (1989). Her novella Mask won the 2014 Malahat Review novella contest. This Hidden Thing was Book of the Year at the 2011 Manitoba Book Awards. A lay historian and former editor, Dueck grew up in Alberta, resided later in Manitoba, Saskatchewan, and Paraguay.
Return Stroke can be ordered through local book stores. She also has copies for sale on her website at: www.doradueck.com.
