by Sarah Felix BurnsSecond Story Press
Sylvie is twenty-something going on ninety. When she meets Lydie Jim, an eighty-something Tlingit elder, at UBC, an unlikely friendship develops, born from the deep need of both to move beyond the pain and losses of their lives. Sylvie carries the appalling responsibility of the disappearance and death of her two year old brother, an event which has shaped her relationship to the world. Lydie is a graduate of a residential school. She lost a daughter, and both her sons were taken into care. But she has survived, carrying the pain of her past with dignity and forgiveness. She has reached a place of peace. It is “good to talk it out of the soul and teach people what we went through so it won’t happen again.”
Song Over Quiet Lake is a story of profound loss and of the ability of the human heart to find joy and continue to love against overwhelming odds. Burns has given life to a complex cast of characters. Pierre, Sylvie’s absent father, her mother, Miriam, River her lover and Jonah, Lydie’s grandson who fights his own demons as he begins to understand that the life he wants is his to lose.
It is an ambitious undertaking. There are times when the dialogue is stiff, but it is Lydie’s voice which emerges strong and powerful, pulling the other characters into her sphere as their stories interconnect. She is a survivor, an elder whose wisdom and joy shine from the page. “I never worry about being lost no more. ‘Cause I know the maps are in our heads. Just like the songs and stories. We humans go away from our maps and forget the way, but if we dream hard enough, the maps come back.”
Sarah Felix Burns is the winner of the 2009 Northern Lit Award for her first novel, Jackfish, the Vanishing Village. She was born and raised in Sault Ste. Marie, Ontario.
