Wayne Grady – författare

How far would a son go to belong? And how far would a father go to protect him? With his curly black hair and his wicked grin, everyone swoons and thinks of Frank Sinatra when Navy musician Jackson Lewis takes the stage. It''s World War II, and while stationed in St. John''s, Newfoundland, Jack meets the well-heeled, romantic Vivian Clift, a local girl who has never stepped off the Rock and is desperate to see the world. They marry against Vivian''s family''s wishes--hard to say what it is, but there''s something about Jack that they just don''t like--and as the war draws to a close, the new couple travels to Windsor to meet Jack''s family.But when Vivian meets Jack''s mother and brother, everything she thought she knew about her new husband gets called into question. They don''t live in the dream home that Jack depicted, they all look different from one another--and different from anyone Vivian has ever seen--and after weeks of waiting to meet Jack''s father, William Henry, he never materializes. Steeped in jazz and big-band music, spanning pre- and post-war Windsor-Detroit, St. John''s, Newfoundland, and 1950s Toronto, this is an arresting, heartwrenching novel about fathers and sons, love and sacrifice, race relations and a time in our history when the world was on the cusp of momentous change.

For readers of Colson Whitehead, James McBride, Yaa Gyasi and Lawrence Hill, Up From Freedom is a powerful and emotional novel about the dangers that arise when we stay silent in the face of prejudice or are complicit in its development.As a young man, Virgil Moody vowed he would never be like his father, he would never own slaves. When he moves from his father''s plantation in Savannah to New Orleans, he takes with him Annie, a tiny woman with sharp eyes and a sharper tongue, who he is sure would not survive life on the plantation. She''ll be much safer with him, away from his father''s cruelty. And when he discovers Annie''s pregnancy, already a few months along, he is all the more certain that he made the right decision. As the years pass, the divide between Moody''s assumptions and Annie''s reality widens ever further. Moody even comes to think of Annie as his wife and Lucas as their son. Of course, they are not. As Annie reminds him, in moments of anger, she and Moody will never be equal. She and her son are enslaved. When their "family" breaks apart in the most brutal and tragic way, and Lucas flees the only life he''s ever known, Moody must ask himself whether he has become the man he never wanted to be--but is he willing to hear the answer?Stretching from the war-torn banks of the Rio Brazos in Texas to the muddy waters of Freedom, Indiana, Moody travels through a country on the brink of civil war, relentlessly searching for Lucas and slowly reconciling his past sins with his hopes for the future. When he meets Tamsey, a former slave, and her family trying to escape the reach of the Fugitive Slave Act, Moody sees an opportunity for redemption. But the world is on the cusp of momentous change, and though some things may be forgotten, nothing is ever really forgiven.

What begins as a road trip through America soon becomes a journey of discovery into themselves and into the heart of the next-door neighbour they thought they knew. For Wayne Grady, the thrill of landscape and history is tempered by memories of racism and his own family roots. Merilyn Simonds, her ear tuned for the offbeat, finds curious echoes of the ex-pat promised land she grew up with. Together they travel against the tide of American history, following in the literary tire tracks of John Steinbeck, William Least Heat Moon, and Francis Trollope.Grady and Simonds experience the splendors of the Mojave Desert, the Grand Canyon, the Mississippi River, and the bayou’s of Louisiana and the Outer Banks and contemplate the impact of geography on culture and of culture on landscape. They observe America from the outside, yet feel strangely at home.Part travelogue, part exploration, part mid-winter love story told with wit and acuity by one of Canada’s most engaging literary couples, Breakfast at the Exit Cafe is a journey into the reality behind the cultural myth that is America.

The Great Lakes have been central to the development of eastern North America. In this “beautifully designed, comprehensive gem of a guide to the ecosystem at the heart of Canada” (The Tyee), award-winning science and nature writer Wayne Grady makes scientific concepts accessible as he reveals how human impact has changed this life-giving region.The Great Lakes: A Natural History of a Changing Region is the most authoritative, complete and accessible book to date about the biology and ecology of this vital, ever-changing terrain. Written by one of Canada''s best-known science and nature writers, it is intended not only for those who live in the Great Lakes region, but for anyone captivated by the splendor of the natural world and sensitive to the challenges of its preservation. It is both a first-hand tribute and an essential guide to a fascinating ecosystem in eternal flux.

Did you keep a list of the words coined by Covid? Wayne Grady did! They're deftly woven into a journal/timeline, taking us through two years of surrealism and limbo.—Margaret AtwoodThis exploration of the many new terms of the Covid-19 pandemic provides insight into the ways an ever-evolving vocabulary helped us cope with our anxiety and adapt to a new reality.When the pandemic struck in early 2020, Wayne Grady started collecting the words and phrases that arose from our shared global experience. Some, such as “uptick” and “pivot,” had existed before but now took on new meaning, and others, such as “covidivorce,” “quarantini,” “covexit,” and “shecession,” appeared for the first time, their meaning instantly clear. Through this new vocabulary, we became more able to adapt to change, to domesticate it in a sense, and to reduce our fears.Moving from the very beginning of the pandemic (the “Before Times”) and our early response to it through the peaks and troughs of the various waves in countries throughout the world, and ending with a contemplation of what the “After Times” might look like, this book takes us on a journey through the pandemic and illuminates both how this new language has unfolded and how it has changed the way we think about ourselves and each other.

Humans’ fascination with water finds full expression in this stellar collection. Included are writings from Mark Twain, who marvels at the teeming humanity on the Ganges; Henry Stanley, searching for Livingston and discovering instead Lake Albert Edward; selections from A Compleat Angler and A River Runs Through It; and more than a dozen other classic works by explorers, adventurers, natural historians, and novelists.

Next to rain forests, deserts are the most biologically diverse ecosystems on Earth. In fact, a desert is never a single ecosystem but a concentration of dozens, ranging from arid flatlands to high mesas to canyons, and oases. Filled with unexpected life and unforgiving conditions, the desert evokes a vivid and passionate response from those who experience it and has inspired powerful literature. The writings in this collection celebrate this complex environment in all its wondrous guises. Among them, 19th-century explorer Sven Hedin staggers through a deadly sandstorm in the Taklamatan desert, whose name means "You enter and do not return." Ann Zwinger contemplates golden asters and rabbitbush in a lonely Utah canyon. Ariel Dorfman encounters time and memory in El Norte Grande. This fascinating anthology is the first in a series from Greystone Books celebrating a single natural or geographic phenomenon through the eyes of major world writers past and present.

“Only God can make a tree,” wrote Joyce Kilmer in one of the most celebrated of poems. In Tree: A Life Story, authors David Suzuki and Wayne Grady extend that celebration in a “biography” of this extraordinary — and extraordinarily important — organism. A story that spans a millennium and includes a cast of millions but focuses on a single tree, a Douglas fir, Tree describes in poetic detail the organism’s modest origins that begin with a dramatic burst of millions of microscopic grains of pollen. The authors recount the amazing characteristics of the species, how they reproduce and how they receive from and offer nourishment to generations of other plants and animals. The tree’s pivotal role in making life possible for the creatures around it — including human beings — is lovingly explored. The richly detailed text and Robert Bateman’s original art pay tribute to this ubiquitous organism that is too often taken for granted.

From Edward Whymper’s ascent of the Matterhorn in the 1860s to Jon Krakauer’s vivid profiles of modern mountaineers, this collection offers indelible impressions from writers who experienced the mystery and the grandeur of the mountains — and who lived to tell about it. Highlights include John Muir’s “A Perilous Night on Mount Shasta” and Belmore Browne’s heart-stopping “Conquest of Mt. McKinley.”

What begins as a road trip through America soon becomes a journey of discovery into themselves and into the heart of the next-door neighbour they thought they knew. For Wayne Grady, the thrill of landscape and history is tempered by memories of racism and his own family roots. Merilyn Simonds, her ear tuned for the offbeat, finds curious echoes of the ex-pat promised land she grew up with. Together they travel against the tide of American history, following in the literary tire tracks of John Steinbeck, William Least Heat Moon, and Francis Trollope. Grady and Simonds experience the splendors of the Mojave Desert, the Grand Canyon, the Mississippi River, and the bayou's of Louisiana and the Outer Banks and contemplate the impact of geography on culture and of culture on landscape. They observe America from the outside, yet feel strangely at home. Part travelogue, part exploration, part mid-winter love story told with wit and acuity by one of Canada's most engaging literary couples, Breakfast at the Exit Cafe is a journey into the reality behind the cultural myth that is America.