A Year of Days

By Myrl Coulter
Categories: Literature & Language Studies, Canadian Literature, Health, Social Work & Psychology, Health & Medicine
Series: Robert Kroetsch Series
Publisher: University of Alberta Press
Paperback : 9781772120455, 208 pages, February 2015
Ebook (EPUB) : 9781772120783, 208 pages, March 2015
Ebook (MobiPocket) : 9781772120790, 208 pages, March 2015
Ebook (PDF) : 9781772120806, 208 pages, March 2015

Table of contents

Gut Feelings
Twenty-Eight Magnificent Mexican Sunsets
Those Pesky Natal Days
Death by Dementia
Perforated Hearts
Giant Bunnies Don’t Deliver Chocolate Eggs
Gym Interrupted, Again
The Parent Days
May Long is Tee Time
Lakes I Have Known
Cornucopia Soup
Survival Gear
Wearing Black
Music on the Hill
Current Crossings
Epilogue

Author’s Note
Acknowledgements

Description

“As soon as she was gone from this earth, I felt an overwhelming need for more of her. I had to find her again. But how do you find someone after they’re gone for good?”

After her mother succumbed to a rare form of dementia, Myrl Coulter turned the eulogy she had written for the funeral into a series of meditations on absence. The result is fifteen personal narrative essays that move through the vacations, holidays, special occasions, and ordinary days each year brings. Coulter reaches for the mother who is gone, yet ever-present, no matter where she is or what she is doing. In every captivating detail of Coulter’s world, A Year of Days offers readers an intimate odyssey of experience and catharsis.

Awards

  • Winner, Independent Publisher Book Awards, Bronze in Essay/Creative Non-Fiction 2016
  • Runner-up, INDIEFAB Book of the Year Awards / Foreword Reviews 2016

Reviews

On the Edmonton Journal's Bestsellers list (Edmonton Nonfiction) for the week of May 8, 2015

- Edmonton Journal

"A Year of Days is light without ever treading Hallmark grounds, funny while still acknowledging the gravitas of death and full of the remembered warmth or loss of not only the 'special' days, but also the days that lie around them by the hundreds: days at the lake, Mexican holidays and days in which we simply move and live. 'Keep moving,' Coulter writes. 'Movement is life.'"

- Kimmy Beach

"The book spans a single calendar year, but Coulter says what it’s really about is the process of living through the same dates and events, time and time again, even as our experiences of them change dramatically as we age." [Full article at http://bit.ly/1E0p6TF]

- Michael Hingston

#3 on the Edmonton Journal's Bestsellers list (Edmonton Nonfiction) for the week of May 22, 2015

- Edmonton Journal