elma's almanac

reading, writing, & RETROspectives

Monday, October 2, 2023

Good advice here. https://tinyurl.com/4adpkrcs

Elma Schemenauer: My 1940s-era novel Consider the Sunflowers is a story of love, Mennonites, and family. It paints a colourful picture of life on the home front during World War II and after. As the story opens, it's 1940 and Tina Janz doesn't want to marry the man her pious Mennonite parents have chosen for her. He's as boring as turnips compared with the dashing half-Gypsy Frank Warkentin. Obsessed with Frank, Tina leaves her job in Vancouver and marries him. However, her joy is soon overshadowed by loneliness on Frank's farm in the prairie community of Coyote, Saskatchewan. When Frank shuns local Mennonites because some of them scorn his mixed parentage, Tina feels torn between her Mennonite heritage and her husband. Their son's death drives the couple farther apart. Then Tina's former boyfriend shows up, setting off a series of events that send her and Frank stumbling toward a new understanding of love, loyalty, faith, and freedom. Consider the Sunflowers is 299 pages, $19.95 paperback, published by Borealis Press of Ottawa, ISBN 978-0-88887-575-4. Ask for it in a bookstore or library. Or order online from Amazon, Chapters Indigo, or Borealis Press of Ottawa.

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