Finnie Walsh

Finnie Walsh
Author: Steven Galloway
Publisher: Raincoast Books
Total Pages: 182
Release: 2006-02-06
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 9781551928357

"Finnie Walsh will forever remain in my daily thoughts, not only because of the shocking circumstances of his absurd demise, but because he managed to misunderstand what was truly important even though he was right about almost everything else." So begins Steven Galloway's critically acclaimed first novel. The story is told by Paul Woodward, Finnie's best friend and the only good child in a long line of delinquents. Hockey is one of the few things they have in common: Finnie's family is rich and snobbish, while Paul's father works the night shift at the local mill owned by Finnie's father. One fateful day, the boys noisily play hockey in the Woodwards' driveway, keeping Paul's father awake. This seemingly innocent activity triggers a shattering chain of events. Finnie Walsh has been compared to the work of John Irving, but Galloway's voice, most particularly his unforgettable portrait of the title character, is uniquely his own.

Finnie Walsh

Finnie Walsh
Author: Steven Galloway
Publisher: Vintage Canada
Total Pages: 178
Release: 2010-01-05
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 0307398668

Steven Galloway's first novel, an incredible coming of age story, now revised and available in trade paperback from Vintage Canada. Finnie Walsh is a captivating, Irving-esque story of family, friendship, redemption, and legend. Paul Woodward lives in Portsmouth, a quiet northern mill-town. Born the day Paul Henderson planted the puck between the pipes against the Soviet Union to win the 1972 Super Series, Paul has no choice about playing hockey. His best friend Finnie Walsh is stinking rich. He is also fellow hockey fanatic and the only good kid in a long line of delinquent brothers. Paul's father works the nightshift at the local mill, owned by Finnie's father. One fateful day the boys noisily prepare for their first season of hockey in the Woodward driveway, keeping Paul's father awake when he should be sleeping. This triggers a chain of world-altering events. Galloway proves that childhood innocence, while not exactly bliss, can be amusing and more than mildly instructional. This is the book John Irving would have written if he understood hockey as well as wrestling. Finnie Walsh, like the fabled games before NHL expansion, is a story about greatness and legend. But it's also a heartsong to family, friendship, and atonement.

The Cellist of Sarajevo

The Cellist of Sarajevo
Author: Steven Galloway
Publisher: Vintage Canada
Total Pages: 274
Release: 2009-02-24
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 0307371654

This brilliant novel with universal resonance tells the story of three people trying to survive in a city rife with the extreme fear of desperate times, and of the sorrowing cellist who plays undaunted in their midst. One day a shell lands in a bread line and kills twenty-two people as the cellist watches from a window in his flat. He vows to sit in the hollow where the mortar fell and play Albinoni’s Adagio once a day for each of the twenty-two victims. The Adagio had been re-created from a fragment after the only extant score was firebombed in the Dresden Music Library, but the fact that it had been rebuilt by a different composer into something new and worthwhile gives the cellist hope. Meanwhile, Kenan steels himself for his weekly walk through the dangerous streets to collect water for his family on the other side of town, and Dragan, a man Kenan doesn’t know, tries to make his way towards the source of the free meal he knows is waiting. Both men are almost paralyzed with fear, uncertain when the next shot will land on the bridges or streets they must cross, unwilling to talk to their old friends of what life was once like before divisions were unleashed on their city. Then there is “Arrow,” the pseudonymous name of a gifted female sniper, who is asked to protect the cellist from a hidden shooter who is out to kill him as he plays his memorial to the victims. In this beautiful and unforgettable novel, Steven Galloway has taken an extraordinary, imaginative leap to create a story that speaks powerfully to the dignity and generosity of the human spirit under extraordinary duress.

Ascension

Ascension
Author: Steven Galloway
Publisher: Vintage Canada
Total Pages: 299
Release: 2011-07-27
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 0307375404

The acclaimed author of Finnie Walsh turns from small-town hockey to the extraordinary intrigues of circus life during the heyday of the Big Top through the story of Salvo Ursari, undisputed master of the high wire. As the novel opens, it is the summer of 1976. Salvo is 66 years old and has decided he can never retire. Already famous thanks to his days in an American circus, he has made a living in recent times performing solo walks of extraordinary difficulty. And so he finds himself attempting to accomplish the most difficult feat of his career: to walk a wire strung between the twin towers of the World Trade Center, 1350 feet from the ground. Transylvania in 1919 is a place of poverty and persecution for the Rom people. Salvo follows his father to a village church, where the senior Ursari -- the only man who volunteers for the task -- is to climb the steeple to replace a large iron crucifix that had been removed for safe-keeping during the war. He restores the cross, but it is not properly attached and as they are leaving, it falls, killing a priest. When the villagers exact their revenge, Salvo’s parents are killed and he is separated from his brother and sister. Thus begins nearly a lifetime of being forced to flee from suspicion and misfortune that takes the reader from Europe to the US to British Columbia’s Fraser Valley and back to Manhattan. Ascension combines powerful storytelling -- including stories of the Romany people, poverty-stricken but resourceful, and rich in legend -- with great surprise and originality; Steven Galloway makes it clear why he is one of the hottest young writers in Canada today. Excerpt from Ascension “Once a newspaper man had asked him what it felt like to walk high above the crowd, with death looming beneath you and success a long way off on the other platform. Salvo had told the man that it was like being a bird, an eagle, but he knew that wasn’t true at all. He was a man, nothing more. Still, he was a man who dared do things other men watched and admired and were jealous of. He walked for these people as much as for anyone. But today he was walking only for himself. That was the difference with these solo walks. When he was among them, he was one of them, but here he is timeless, one man on a wire far above it all, in a separate place. He was not free, but he was as free as he would ever be.”

The Confabulist

The Confabulist
Author: Steven Galloway
Publisher: Knopf Canada
Total Pages: 254
Release: 2014-04-29
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 0307400875

From the beloved, award-winning, bestselling author of The Cellist of Sarajevo, a beautiful, suspense-filled novel that uses the life and sudden death of Harry Houdini to weave a magical tale of intrigue, love and illusion. The Confabulist weaves together the life, loves and murder of the world's greatest magician, Harry Houdini, with the story of the man who killed him (twice): Martin Strauss, an everyday man whose fate was tied to the magician's in unforeseen ways. A cast of memorable characters spins around Houdini's celebrity-driven life, as they did in his time: from the Romanov family soon to be assassinated, to Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and the powerful heads of Scotland Yard, and the Spiritualists who would use whoever they could to establish their religion. A brilliant novel about fame and ambition, reality and illusion, and the ways that love, grief and imagination can alter what we perceive and believe.

Fortunate Life

Fortunate Life
Author: A.B. Facey
Publisher: Fremantle Press
Total Pages: 420
Release: 2018-04-21
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 1925591417

Albert Facey’s story is the story of Australia.Born in 1894, and first sent to work at the age of eight, Facey lived the rough frontier life of a labourer and farmer and jackaroo, becoming lost and then rescued by Indigenous trackers, then gaining a hard-won literacy, surviving Gallipoli, raising a family through the Depression, losing a son in the Second World War, and meeting his beloved Evelyn with whom he shared nearly sixty years of marriage.Despite enduring unimaginable hardships, Facey always saw his life as a fortunate one.A true classic of Australian literature, Facey’s simply penned story offers a unique window onto the history of Australian life through the greater part of the twentieth century – the extraordinary journey of an ordinary man.

Plpr3

Plpr3
Author: Annette Keen
Publisher: Longman
Total Pages: 64
Release: 2013
Genre: Foreign Language Study
ISBN: 9781408291375

Tells the story of three people trying to survive in a city rife with the extreme fear of desperate times, and of the sorrowing cellist who plays undaunted in their midst. One day a shell lands in a bread line and kills twenty-two people as the cellist watches from a window in his flat. He vows to sit in the hollow where the mortar fell and play Albinoni's Adagio once a day for each of the twenty-two victims. In this beautiful and unforgettable novel, Steven Galloway has taken an extraordinary, imaginative leap to create a story that speaks powerfully to the dignity and generosity of the human spirit under extraordinary duress.

This Brief Tragedy

This Brief Tragedy
Author: John Evangelist Walsh
Publisher: Grove Press
Total Pages: 230
Release: 1991
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 9780802111197

Examines the final years of Emily Dickinson's life and the tragedies that most affected her and her family, including her brother Austin's illicit love affair with Mabel Todd

Fast Food Nation

Fast Food Nation
Author: Eric Schlosser
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
Total Pages: 387
Release: 2012
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 0547750331

An exploration of the fast food industry in the United States, from its roots to its long-term consequences.

Sports-Related Concussions in Youth

Sports-Related Concussions in Youth
Author: National Research Council
Publisher: National Academies Press
Total Pages: 215
Release: 2014-02-04
Genre: Medical
ISBN: 0309288037

In the past decade, few subjects at the intersection of medicine and sports have generated as much public interest as sports-related concussions - especially among youth. Despite growing awareness of sports-related concussions and campaigns to educate athletes, coaches, physicians, and parents of young athletes about concussion recognition and management, confusion and controversy persist in many areas. Currently, diagnosis is based primarily on the symptoms reported by the individual rather than on objective diagnostic markers, and there is little empirical evidence for the optimal degree and duration of physical rest needed to promote recovery or the best timing and approach for returning to full physical activity. Sports-Related Concussions in Youth: Improving the Science, Changing the Culture reviews the science of sports-related concussions in youth from elementary school through young adulthood, as well as in military personnel and their dependents. This report recommends actions that can be taken by a range of audiences - including research funding agencies, legislatures, state and school superintendents and athletic directors, military organizations, and equipment manufacturers, as well as youth who participate in sports and their parents - to improve what is known about concussions and to reduce their occurrence. Sports-Related Concussions in Youth finds that while some studies provide useful information, much remains unknown about the extent of concussions in youth; how to diagnose, manage, and prevent concussions; and the short- and long-term consequences of concussions as well as repetitive head impacts that do not result in concussion symptoms. The culture of sports negatively influences athletes' self-reporting of concussion symptoms and their adherence to return-to-play guidance. Athletes, their teammates, and, in some cases, coaches and parents may not fully appreciate the health threats posed by concussions. Similarly, military recruits are immersed in a culture that includes devotion to duty and service before self, and the critical nature of concussions may often go unheeded. According to Sports-Related Concussions in Youth, if the youth sports community can adopt the belief that concussions are serious injuries and emphasize care for players with concussions until they are fully recovered, then the culture in which these athletes perform and compete will become much safer. Improving understanding of the extent, causes, effects, and prevention of sports-related concussions is vitally important for the health and well-being of youth athletes. The findings and recommendations in this report set a direction for research to reach this goal.