We Who Can Fly: Poems, Essays and Memories in Honour of Adele Wiseman

Patricia Morley is professor emerita of English and Canadian studies at
Concordia University, and the author of Kurlek, Margaret Laurence: The
Long Journey Home, and As Though Life Mattered: Leo Kennedy’s Story.

During her life and since her death, Adele Wise-man (1928-1992) has
rarely received the recognition she so richly deserves. Wiseman
inherited her love of storytelling and her strong sense of humor from
her family. Almost all of her main characters are Jewish, and exemplify
Jewish values.

Editor Elizabeth Greene describes herself as “someone who barely knew
Adele,” yet her introduction is personal and full of insights. In We
Who Can Fly, Greene illuminates the special qualities of Wiseman’s
work and probes for reasons as to why that work remains partly
unpublished and largely unappreciated.

This tribute consists of well-chosen critical essays by Kenneth Sherman
and Seymour Mayne; sparkling interviews with Gabriella Morisco, Steven
Heighton, and Mary Cameron; reminiscences by fellow writers Joyce
Marshall, Sylvia Fraser, and Miriam Waddington, and her daughter Tamara
Stone; excerpts from the Wiseman– Margaret Laurence correspondence;
some of Wiseman’s unpublished writings (including her story, “Goon
of the Moon and Expendables” as well as several poems); a few
black-and-white photographs; and an excellent 14-page biographical log
by Ruth Panofsky.

We Who Can Fly provides a rounded yet in-depth portrait of one of
Canada’s great writers. This book, along with Wiseman’s novels, The
Sacrifice and Crackpot, belong in the library of every reader who
struggles to understand the human heart.