Travelling In

Joan McGrath is a Toronto Board of Education library consultant.

Travelling In is a collection of 14 short stories by an author of great
promise. Some of the pieces, previously unpublished in book form, have
appeared in various journals, or have been aired on cbc’s Morningside.

Most of Rysstad’s fiction is based on the hard reality of life in
coastal fishing communities—especially on the lives of the women who
spend so much of their married lives separated from their husbands, who
are part of fishing fleets. At a remove, they share with their men a
hard and dangerous life in which hard work is certain but reward is not.

Rysstad’s intimate pictures of a way of life, and of the people
shaped by it, are hauntingly evocative. Hers is a powerful talent,
informed by personal experience. She sounds hidden depths of the human
spirit with a rare delicacy and sensitivity.