Happy Pilgrims

M. Wayne Cunningham is a past executive director of the Saskatchewan
Arts Board and the former director of Academic and Career Programs at
East Kootenay Community College.

As the 11 pieces in Happy Pilgrims amply illustrate, Stephen Finucan has
a definite flair for telling a story, developing a character, describing
a scene, and using language in picturesque and memorable ways. This
collection, Finucan’s first book, features a broad sweep of
sympathetic characters on pilgrimages in a variety of settings. They
include a gypsy tarot card reader who tries unsuccessfully to substitute
a Sainsbury’s ravioli coupon for her lost Death card; a divorcée who
spites her ex-husband by renovating the windows of their house; an Irish
priest’s brother who shatters and then painstakingly rebuilds the
Blessed Virgin’s shrine, all on whispered instructions from his dead
mother; and a starstruck matron whose advances to an aging matinee idol
cast her as a “madwoman stalker.”

In “The Honeymooners,” an embittered grandfather whose actions have
alienated him from the rest of his family travels to his ailing wife’s
bedside to take her on a long-delayed vacation, only to be told, “in a
voice cracking like dead leaves, ‘Whoever you are, go away.” In
“On Angel’s Wings,” a young grandson named Angel Lovingly crafts a
pair of outsized wings and he straps to his grandfather’s wheelchair
before he and the old man soar away on their pilgrimage. “The Happy
Pilgrim” cleverly juxtaposes the pilgrimage of St. Bernadette
(emphasizing her suffering and mistreatment by her colleagues) with that
of a young travel guide as he wends his way through the greed and
corruption of modern-day Lourdes. Finucan’s pilgrims are a colorful
lot and their journeys make for interesting reading.