Days and Nights on the Amazon

John Walker is a professor of Spanish studies at Queen’s University.

Although contemporary Canadian literature is not noted for Magic
Realism, a trait one associates more with modern Latin American
narrative, Quaife—a Calgary-based writer whose first novel, Bone Bird,
won the 1989 Commonwealth Writers Prize for Best First Book in the
Canadian-Caribbean region—introduces this element into Days and Nights
on the Amazon.

The rough Canadian farm-hand Liberty (Libby) Hall and the Brazilian
plant-collector Acбcia Aranha, even though they live worlds apart, have
much in common, and are linked by their dreams. Libby’s adventures,
following the death of her husband and the subsequent demise of her
strange dog Schneider (a victim of failed animal experiments), are the
stuff of Acбcia’s story, narrated to and by the living creature
Amazonas, source of all life and death.

Through these two strong, independent protagonists, Quaife links the
“civilized” world of North America with the “barbaric” world of
Manaus, a city on the Amazon. She uses the Amazon River, which connects
the two continents of the Americas, as a symbol and key character to
magically and spiritually unite the two protagonists, even in death.

This thought-provoking, poetic, and mysterious book about life and
death captures the essence of the river-dominated region and of
existence itself.