The UFP Fiction Series celebrates the best in literary fiction across all its wonderful genres. From the novel to short story collections to the novella, the fiction.
Mother Tongue
by Ezgi Üstündağ
ISBN: 978-1-988214-32-0 (ebook)
ISBN: 978-1-988214-31-3 (paperback)
96 pages
When Erdem Çeliktaş, a writer from Turkey, wakes one day to find he can no longer speak or understand anything but English, his life is overturned. While Erdem’s native Turkish has always held him as father, author, and political activist in a familiar light, Erdem’s English mind offers an altered perspective, awareness, even character. With no explanation or cure to be found, Erdem must find a way to reframe his thoughts, his work, even his memories in order to understand his fractured world.
Mother Tongue is an elegant journey that examines how we may be shaped and reshaped by language. Üstündag creates a clever and bittersweet pilgrimage of empathy and change, quietly shining light on the overwhelming isolation of the immigrant, the refugee, and the traveler.
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The Way to Go Home
by Catharine Leggett
ISBN: 978-1-988214-14-6 (paperback)
A horseback riding accident in June, 1973 leaves Buddy Scott, the central character in The Way to Go Home, with a broken body in a remote ravine. As he awaits rescue, thinking that his life is about to end, his mind wanders into his past. His journey began at age thirteen, when he was suddenly orphaned along with eight other siblings. Unable to keep their Wyoming ranch, Buddy and his older brother, Ray, stay with an uncle, which turns out to be a harrowing ordeal that ends with them running away. What ensues is a road-adventure story that crosses the United States over a period of years. As drifters, Buddy and Ray encounter a host of engaging and unusual characters—from the poorest to the most elite, from shysters and connivers to decent folk. When Ray leaves to go back to the west, Buddy lands in Canada, where he finally sets down roots in the hopes of finding a place for himself. The idealized “home” inscribed deep in his heart through the stories of his childhood is not the one he makes for himself in Southern Ontario. A drifter’s past and the scrappy lifestyle that accompanied it leads him off course, and he falls into self-destructive behaviour. His wife Meg and his four children can’t restore something he lost long ago, and until he seeks his own personal redemption Buddy can not find a sense of belonging. Home is not where he thought it would be.
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Snowny Strangeways
by Melissa Tantaquidgeon Zobel
ISBN: 978-1988214191 (paperback)
In the quaint shoreline town of Mystick, Connecticut, an ancient order has existed since the first violent conflicts between indigenous peoples and foreign settlers. Founded by gray-haired womyn who wanted to ensure that violence was never repeated, these Grays continue to run the town. Once you have joined them, you can't turn back. When Snowy Strangeways returns to Mystick for her grandmother's Gray funeral, she unearths information about the circumstances of her mother's murder and unveils the secrets of these Gray womyn,once and for all.
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North to Lakeville
by Jason Kapcala
ISBN: 978-1-988214-14-6 (paperback)
Lakeville has fallen on hard times. But don't tell that to the locals. Though they’re fond of claiming that nothing ever happens in this corner of Pennsylvania, their stories suggest otherwise. There's the former blues guitar player who never opens his case. The classically trained clarinetist who runs the lakeside bait and tackle shop, even though he hates fishing. The snake wrangler who worries about the bad intentions of his wife’s artsy friends. The firefighter who fears retirement more than death. The grandmother who is determined to hike to the top of Fernridge Mountain. And the alcoholic excavation foreman who whittles toys for his estranged children while investigating the suspicious death of his boss. Their intersecting stories, a full stringer of unfulfilled dreams and missed opportunities, are the kind of "fish tales" best told over a pint at Bebe's Tavern or in boat on Grady's Lake during those quiet moments before dusk.
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The Good Doctor
by Michael Kula
ISBN: 978-1-988214-12-2 (paperback)
In the summer of 1917, the renowned veterinarian Dr. David Roberts and his socialite wife, Mary, suffer a tragic loss that leaves them both isolated and alone, struggling to find comfort in whatever ways they can. That winter, amid his lingering grief, Dr. Roberts’ prosperous business now faces unforeseen challenges, and in attempt to overcome them, he begins writing a book with the help of a young schoolteacher. While the distraction of the project brings him momentary relief, the secret pain he’s been carrying proves to be too much for him to escape alone. Over time, as his relationship with the young teacher deepens, complicating the troubles of his marriage, he must ultimately face the reality that by trying to avoid hurting those around him, he might be doing just that.
Based on a true story, The Good Doctor draws on a rich variety of sources as it takes readers on a passionate journey through the American heartland at a time of change for both the country and the tragic lives of the characters who inhabit these pages
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The Adamantine River Passage
by Steve B Howard
ISBN:978-1-988214-13-9 (paperback)
From the darkest days shall rise light and healing. The Adamantine River Passage is a story that delivers redemption and healing for a life shattered by tragedy and subsequent alcoholism. We open with the narrator, Lucas, in a skid row motel along the White River outskirts of Portland as he searches for a way out of darkness in the aftermath of a family tragedy. He finds himself in the company of society's outcasts and sees that he is sliding towards their fallen lives with a sense that he is and must be capable of an escape that they are not. Lucas turns to his family's past, towards the passion he left behind in past life, fly-fishing. Amidst the great tributaries of the American West, the Adamantine River is the place of mythic fly fishing and in the spiritual hinterland of the arid Columbia Basin of Eastern Washington. Turning his back to the steady spiral of alcoholism and his last few possessions, it is here that Lucas travels to find his passage from the darkness that his life has arrived at. Fly rod in hand, he enters the Adamantine River basin in search of that which he left behind and a way forward to the world that still awaits him. What awaits him there is a spiritual awakening that will either drive him forever into darkness or save him from it.
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The Moon is Real
by Jerrod Edson
ISBN: 978-1-988214-09-2 (paperback)
Welcome to seedier side of Saint John, New Brunswick. This working class city on the shores of the Bay of Fundy is home to postman and amateur poet Charlie White. Charlie is a hopeless romantic who rediscovers the woman he longs for with a chance run-in with Prin. When his buddy Eddie Smythe finds himself dangerously in arears to the wrong guys, Charlie and Prin are drawn into a dangerous game of survival in this city on the Bay. Two hit men arrive to deliver a message to Eddie and unleashes a whirlwind of events around the city just as Charlie and Prin learn about a love they never knew they had and nearly left years ago. Full of memorable characters and told from the view of the world from the hard-scramble working class of Atlantic Canada, Edson’s tale shows the extent to which the everyday can spiral into the exceptional.
The original manuscript for The Moon is Real was the winner of the 2013 David Adams Richards Prize
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The Puppet Turners of Narrow Interior
by Stephanie Barbe Hammer
ISBN: 9780993769030
Stephanie Barbé Hammer's debut novel takes you to the eastern United States where strange characters converge to revitalize a small town and discover its history. Henry Holbein, the main player, is a simple man with a unique perspective that accidentally brings objects to life and inspires value within a community.
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Upcoming Releases
The Way to Go Home by Catharine Leggett (March 2019)
Mother Tongue by Ezgi Üstündağ (April 2019)
Motown Man by Bob Campbell (Fall 2019)
