Danceland Diary

Luka Dekker and her sister Connie are the inheritors of a secretive and disturbing family history going back three generations to the disappearance of their great-grandfather. Their troubledmother, Lark, also mysteriously disappeared; and their beloved grandmother, who raised thetwo girls, had a life haunted by a traumatic event that is only revealed after her death. The story unfolds against a backdrop of the drug-fueled Downtown Eastside of Vancouver and the horrific pig farm murders, the seductive beauty of rural Saskatchewan, and the glittering lights of a famous prairie dance hall. Luka's quest for her mother, and for peace and love, is a disquieting, moving, and thoroughly engaging examination of intergenerational trauma and forgiveness.

dee Hobsbawn-Smith

dee Hobsbawn-Smith's award-winning poetry, essays, and short fiction has appeared in publications in Canada, the USA, Scotland and elsewhere. She earned her MFA in Writing and her MA in English Lit at the University of Saskatchewan. Her debut poetry collection, Wildness Rushing In, published in 2014, was a finalist for Book of the Year and Best Poetry Collection at the Saskatchewan Book Awards. What Can't Be Undone: Stories was published in 2015. She's a local foods advocate, active in Slow Food for more than twenty years, and has written a stack of books about food, including the award-winning Foodshed: An Edible Alberta Alphabet. She served as the 35th Writer in Residence at Saskatoon Public Library in 2015. Bread & Water: Essays, published in 2021, won the Saskatchewan Book Awards’ nonfiction prize. A new poetry collection, Among the Untamed, is forthcoming next spring. dee lives on the remnants of her family’s farm west of Saskatoon.