Another Reveiw

Hello, Denise.

You have just written a book that takes me back to my home town of Needles.  The year you were there I was in Grade 1.
I can't believe that you have put together such an amazing array of characters, some of whom I can identify.  Of course, I have help from my sister-in-law (married to my brother Ron Volansky).  We lived north of the town on a farm which was about a mile from the Hydro Dam.  The employees lived in well kept green and white houses up the hill from the dam.  Did you ever drive up there?

 I am so thrilled to be reading about the places I walked ( the hill to the high school, the path down from the Green School to the cafe, store, hotel). I went to the school across the lake in Fauquier (Grade1-3) and then the Green School House (Grade 4-6).

You are absolutely funny, funny and I laugh through the chapters.  I don't want to put it down, but I keep it for bedtime reading.

My teacher in Grade 1-3 was the wonderful, retired teacher Mrs. Allen whom you mention in your book.  How wonderfully nostalgic.

I actually just retired from teaching last December, so I totally can relate to your story in so many ways.  I actually taught in a one-room school about 20 miles from Kamloops, in a small community called Tranquille Valley.  So I have come full circle.  I loved it.

I went on your website, and saw your pictures of Needles.  I have those pictures along with many others which I am putting together in a History of Needles, for my own collection.
 
Last weekend we had a 60 year reunion of the building of the High School and 25 years since our first reunion for all who attended the High School.

Just a couple of questions.....if you don't mind.  Is Kokanee the townsite of Edgewood?  And is King City the little town of Burton? Also, I know you mention the names of Needles, Edgewood and Fauquier in your book, so it does get a little confusing. 

Anyhow, I want to thank you soooooo much for such an entertaining book and I love every inch of the places and people you mention, especially Granny Craft (Trent), Bill, Georgika, Mrs. Johnson.

My sister-in-law found your books in Nakusp and she bought three, and I've got one.

Denise, I hope you will respond to this e-mail.  It is as if I know you so well from the way you write of my beautiful, little town of Needles.  It has been my "L'l bit of heaven" this side of the Selkirks and Monashees.

Thank-you Denise, you given me a wonderful gift.

Cheers, Bev Clark

More Reviews: Amazon.ca

5.0 out of 5 stars A fun read for all ages, July 3 2012

By 

Anne - See all my reviews

This review is from: Old Lady Sweetly Is Twenty (Paperback)

"Old Lady Sweetly Is Twenty" is a fun story of the coming of age of the sweet, innocent and lovable Betty. Each page keeps turning itself as we cheer Betty on through her naivety, her eye-opening experiences and finally her resolve. This is a definite read for all ages bringing you back to a time and place of simplicity yet narrow-mindedness. An excellent first book for Denise McKay.

5.0 out of 5 stars Very Good!, July 3 2012

By 

Sonja - See all my reviews

This review is from: Old Lady Sweetly Is Twenty (Paperback)

Reading "Old Lady Sweetly" feels like sharing a cup of tea with a new friend: a new friend that is a great storyteller. It's hard not to love and sympathize with Betty, the protagonist - her challenges, while authentically 1950's, are also timeless and relevant to readers of any generation. I'm a sucker for a good coming-of-age / overcoming-the-odds story, and this book doesn't disappoint.

Amazon UK Review

I found this book to be one of those you can't put down, and I was disappointed when I came to the end of it! It was fascinating to get an insight into life in the real "out-back" in the mountains of British Columbia as recently as 1950! Not a bit like the Mounties in Rose Marie!
Denise McKay is a remarkable author

Barnes & Noble Review

5.0 out of 5 stars Old Lady Sweetly is Hilarious!, July 1 2012

By 

Judith Sylvester - See all my reviews

This review is from: Old Lady Sweetly Is Twenty (Paperback)

This book is the most enjoyable read I have had in a long time. The intrepid “Miz Sweetly” and the eccentric cast of characters she encounters as a teacher in the back woods of Needles, British Columbia are indelibly etched in my heart. Denise McKay vividly captures the naiveté, angst and lustiness of a young woman coming of age in the early 1950s. From avoiding the ramshackle outhouse at her one room schoolhouse, to winning over her unruly class, to staring down a grizzly bear while her would-be lover races away in his skin tight bathing suit, to being accosted by the minister of the Tabernacle Church for being a “whore of Babylon”, Betty’s many pratfalls are both endearing and hilarious. I highly recommend reading this fun and uplifting story!

Book Signing: Chapters book store

Introducing Author Denise McKay

Needles Past

Needles, B.C. (Narrows in the novel) was merely a connecting point for the ferry run that crossed the two Arrow Lakes at their narrowest spot. It was a roadside community with a one-pump gas station, a general store and a mini hotel. It would have been nearly impossible to count the town’s houses –Ten? Twelve? They were almost all surrounded by dense evergreens, on the side of a steeply ascending mountain. The little green schoolhouse where I taught grades four, five and six, was directly above the town, accessed by a circuitous narrow dirt road. No typical pathway ascended that steep mountainside.

Needles General Store

Needles Ferry Landing

Needles Garage and Needles Hotel

There must have been a sense of time almost standing still in 1951: the ever-increasing post-war industrial growth hadn’t affected that community. Not then and, as it turned out, not ever.
How I wish I could have gone there just once more before the Keenleyside dam waters rose up and vanquished that entire complex micro heritage! And said hello just once more to those kindly faces, etched into my memory.

The photos were made available through the courtesy of Milton & Rosemarie Parent: Arrow Lakes Historical Society

Reason for Writing a Novel

In 1990, just as my career as an Abstract painter was really beginning to take off, I became bedridden with polymyalgia, an auto immune disease. As I lay abed day after day for months, too puff-headed to read, fantasy and reality mixing together, I spent my time reliving my past. A lot. Particularly one year of my life. And bit by bit, the structure of a book took form in my head.

I, too, just like Betty Wheatley, had attended Vancouver Normal School in 1951. And I, too, had misspent my time there, having a social whirlwind of a time. The punishment? Instead of a teaching job in Vancouver–my aim-I was offered a job in isolated Needles B.C. , where a wider variety of people than I had met in any city, taught me a myriad of Life’s lessons. And imprinted them indelibly.
It’s a town long gone; an era long vanished; a set of social mores now irrelevant. The setting for a poignant story, I concluded.
Maybe it was the codeine and prednisone — maybe not— but that unpredictable year in Needles soon turned into a comedy instead of a tragedy, once I began putting the story on to paper.

The first draft had just flowed out of my head — a straight forward memoir. Really, just a frame work, I quickly realized, because a memoir was not what I wanted. I edited, I tweaked and the story evolved into what I crave as a reader: sly humour and a storyline with many levels.

The Canadian publishing world was in disarray as I finished the book and the country was in recession. I eventually turned away from writing and put my story in the back of a cupboard. It was the influence of computer experts Jock and Dave McKay that recently coaxed me to try self-publication in this new day and age of digital technology.

Denise McKay

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Publisher (Trafford Publishing)

Early Efforts at Writing

When I first figured out, at some preschool stage, my mind was totally blown away that letters form words. A miracle! I couldn’t stop marvelling at the genius who had invented such a way to portray imagery and display thoughts. I was hooked on both reading and writing. I soon started to try the writing process myself, when I could tear myself away from reading. I was an addicted to both.
First, copycat stories, then poems, then stage plays. By the time I was in grade six I was writing, in a lined scribbler, a novel about a family of six loveable children. I read part of a play I wrote to my class line-up about a kindly grandmother who was dying and two of my friends began to cry. What a feeling of power! I wrote all the way through high school, too. Passionate poetry about the injustices that existed everywhere…especially about the injustices I saw in the small city of Trail B.C. And plays too for the Drama Club.Where did all this material end up? Dumped in the garbage, I guess. It obviously didn’t impress my parents. And I lived so much in an imaginary place that I never thought to save them myself.
During my early married years, as I raised five children, I took great comfort in writing long weekly letters to my parents and in-laws, filled with anecdotes and sketches. For more than ten years these were my creative outlets. Again they ended up as garbage. Only the occasional painting I managed to create would get me any family attention.
But as my children grew and started flying the coop, despite attaining some small fame as a ceramist and painter, I returned to writing: Writing to help me cope with depression. Which it did.


Here’s an example:

White Birds
Written 0ctober 1988


I planted a garden of white birds,
Placed smooth eggs so straight in a row.
In pale-colour eiderdown soil
I laid them so gently below.

I covered them with layers of blankets
As soft and as clean as white snow,
And I shone my bright spotlights upon them
And sang words to help make them grow.

Soon they grew bigger and swelled forth;
I bathed them with sweet water flow,
And one day they all sprouted so wondrously
I marveled to see them all so.

They stretched and they leaved and they blossomed
Put on a most rewarding show,
And my heart ached as I clipped all their rootlets
And watched one by one fly up and go.

Class Photo 1952 (Needles, BC)

This one and only photo I have of my portentous year there (1951-52) is all I have as proof that my sojourn there existed!
I am in the middle of the photo, at the back, amongst the grade six boys. Note to our left, the rope to put up and take down the school flag (Union Jack, of course) and above our heads the school bell. When I look at those young faces, I am transported back to that year. I remember each and every one of them as if I had just said good-bye to them yesterday. Some of the characters in my book resemble some of those dear, earnest, hard-working kids slightly, but I took much creative license, believe me! Blame it on the novelist’s penchant for exaggeration.