Backwater Mystic Blues, the second acclaimed collection of literary
essays by noted Saskatchewan author Lloyd Ratzlaff, out in new editions from Shadowpaw
Press
Backwater Mystic Blues, the second acclaimed collection of essays reflecting on nature, spirituality, and growing up on the prairies by noted Saskatchewan author Lloyd Ratzlaff, now has a new home with Shadowpaw Press Reprise, which publishes new editions of notable, previously published work. Shadowpaw Press also recently republished Ratzlaff’s first collection of essays, The Crow Who Tampered With Time.
“Many thanks to Shadowpaw Press for publishing new editions of Backwater Mystic Blues and The Crow Who Tampered With Time,” Ratzlaff says. “These books first confirmed me as a writer, The Crow a tribute to an urban park which became my sanctuary during a period of loss, and Backwater a tribute to my home village and its countryside. I’m delighted and more than grateful to Shadowpaw for giving them another life and offering them to new circles of readers.”
“As with Lloyd’s previous collection, each essay in Backwater Mystic Blues sparkles, provoking nostalgia, smiles, introspection, and reflection,” says Edward Willett, editor and publisher of Shadowpaw Press. “I’m excited to release this new edition of Backwater Mystic Blues, and I hope it will find many new readers who will enjoy it as much as I did.”
Backwater Mystic Blues can be ordered through most bookstores, online or off. It can also be purchased directly from Shadowpaw Press at https://shadowpawpress.com/product/backwater-mystic-blues/.
More about the book
Shortlisted for the Non-Fiction Book Award and Saskatoon Book Award,
2006 Saskatchewan Book Awards
In this second suite of intimate essays, Lloyd Ratzlaff summons the secret hiding spots, makeshift rafts, and uncomplicated childhood joys that lay the foundations for adult philosophy. In tune with the vivid simplicities of the sensuous world and the honour of unassuming people, Ratzlaff explores the disguises shaped by religion, family, and memory as he recreates the discovery and illumination that his past has offered.
Critical praise
“Backwater Mystic Blues is an extended aide memoire of . . . everyday objects and gestures, retrieved from memory and made to live again in a phosphorescent prose that ‘restores the world to word’ as he writes and whistles in the dark.” – Myrna Kostash
“The essays sing the blues, touching readers as music does, not through linear development or logical exposition but through scenes that resonate emotionally: past reverberates with present and ordinary stuff is transposed into mystical keys . . .In this second instalment of reflective, irreverent, worshipful essays, Ratzlaff bends our usual angles of vision and sheds light and colour on religious experiences of one kind or another.” – Edna Froese, Journal of Mennonite Studies
“The drag of the
mundane and the mixed rapture/terror of the divine both find expression—the
mundane made keenly relevant and the divine fully believable and grounded . . .
Consider it narrative poetry . . . a series of intimate snapshots . . . and
find the soul of a poet and a friend within its pages.” — Martin van Woudenberg, Pacific
Rim Review of Books
About the Author
The most recent book by Lloyd Ratzlaff is a third collection of literary nonfiction, Bindy’s Moon (Thistledown Press). His essays are also featured in several anthologies, including Sons and Mothers: Stories From Mennonite Men, Reading the River: A Traveller’s Companion to the North Saskatchewan River, and apart: a year of pandemic poetry and prose. A former minister, counsellor, and lecturer at the University of Saskatchewan, he has taught writing classes for READ Saskatoon, the Western Development Museum, and the University of Saskatchewan Certificate of Art and Design. He was a columnist for Prairie Messenger Catholic Journal through its last nineteen years of publication. He lives in Saskatoon.
About the Publisher
Shadowpaw Press, founded in Regina, Saskatchewan, by award-winning author Edward Willett in 2018, publishes new work by established and emerging authors through its Premiere imprint and new editions of notable, previously published work through its Reprise imprint. For more information, contact publisher@shadowpawpress.com or visit www.shadowpawpress.com.
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