A Song for My Daughter.

Lori A. Dunn is a ESL teacher, instructional designer, and freelance
writer in New Westminster, B.C.

Set in Vancouver and the Lower Mainland, the novel opens with Vivian, sitting by her favourite fishing hole, recounting the birth of her daughter, Salmon Woman. Born out of the Pacific Ocean, she is picked up by the side of Marine Way by the authorities, naked, shivering, and speechless, and given the name Joan Dark. The other characters who embark on Joan’s quest enter the story through Fraserview Institute, where the silent and mysterious woman is committed. Her innocence and curiosity beguile everyone, including the silently grieving Mary Chingee and the unstable heiress Sally Cunningham. The three women are chosen for a pilot relocation program, and are moved into a halfway house in Vancouver near the Burrard Inlet, where their journey together begins. The three women find commonalities in their enormous differences, create a bond, and set out on a quest to follow the Fraser River north to Mary’s home in Prince George. Adam Rivers, the doctor who committed Joan to Fraserview, becomes obsessed with her and, like the other protagonists, is changed, adding his journaling voice to the story as he leaves his practice to join the quest. Throughout their bonding and their transformations, Vivian watches over them.

Patricia Jean Smith’s moving novel is a grand tale of love and transfiguration, set in modern-day British Columbia and sprinkled lovingly and liberally with First Nations spirituality and magical realism. Joan Dark and her friends set out on a simple road trip to Prince George, but find themselves on a journey of discovery. The elements of magical realism in the story fit naturally into the flow of the narrative. Smith’s prose style is unpretentious with realistic conversations and vivid descriptions of the small towns and side roads of B.C. and the Fraser River that flows past them. The clarity of the prose, combined with well-drawn characters and traces of supernatural events in an everyday world, make A Song for My Daughter a compelling and moving novel.