Means of Escape: A Set of Stories

Andrea Geary is an agricultural reporter for The Manitoba Co-operator.

This diverse set of five stories has a common theme that is captured in
the book’s title. Brody’s characters are seeking to free themselves
from the constraints of memory and from their daily lives. The stories
possess a haunting quality, and readers may be surprised by their
ability to recall details from them.

The highlight of the book is “Eva,” the story of a Moravian
missionary who travels to the coast of Newfoundland to minister to the
Eskimos. Though captivated by the Native people’s freedom and basic
way of life, the young man anxiously awaits his fiancée’s arrival on
the annual ship. But it is not his beloved Eva who joins him at the
mission station—it is a woman selected by the Church to be his wife.
The missionary retreats into the natural elements of his Native
friends’ lives, and comes close to death. Although he survives, he is
mentally damaged and left to puzzle over the contrast between the Native
people’s beliefs and Christianity.

“Family Trees” tells of a woman’s search into her past, and the
horrors that are exposed as she uncovers her family’s fate during
World War II. The niece who prompted the search is forced to share the
discoveries her aunt makes.

Brody is an anthropologist, filmmaker, and writer who uses the
experiences he accumulated during travels in Ireland, England, Canada,
and the Canadian Arctic as fodder for his fiction.