Anne Cameron

Magic.The world is full of magic.It's everywhere ..."When I was eight or nine - or maybe ten or eleven - I don't remember for sure now, Klopinum would share her stories with me."And thus it begins, the long-awaited successor to Anne Cameron's ground-breaking "Daughters of Copper Woman." Magic in many incarnations - mischievous, terrifying, benevolent, erotic-suffuses the pages of this extraordinary collection, from the humourous tales of the trickster Raven through the feminist fable of the bearded woman to the myth of the lazy boy who was reared by whales and saved the world, climaxing with the epic story of the mythical superwoman Dzelarhons - First Mother, Frog Mother, Weeping Woman, guardian and teacher of her people.Praise for "Daughters of Copper Woman" ..". an enchanting, uplifting revelation."-"Ottawa Citizen."" . . startling mix of the exotic, the repellent, and the fantastic ... a unique book, a work thick with substance and extraordinary life."-"Vancouver Sun.".". the underlying vision, though tender, has the thrust and the strength of steel."-"Quill & Quire"

The first book of a funny fantasy and adventure series about three friends who discover they have the ability to control the weather. It's Storm Chasers meets The 39 Clues, in a story that Booklist called "fascinating . . . mixing serious science with full-on fantasy."Eleven-year-old Angus's world is turned upside down when he is mysteriously whisked away to become an apprentice at the Perilous Exploratorium for Weather and Vicious Storms. At Perilous, the world's most dangerous weather is studied to protect mankind from its ravages. There, Angus discovers that his parents aren't boring government workers after all--they are actually famous Lightning Catchers, and they've been kidnapped. With the help of two loyal new friends, Angus intends to find them. This fast-paced, action-packed, funny story of friendship, adventure, science, and mayhem begins a high-octane four-book series.

First a multiple award-winning film produced for television, then a novel and winner of the 1978 Gibson Literary Award, then a perennial bestseller, Dreamspeaker is the powerful and deeply moving story of a boy caught between two worlds, who learns too late the healing strength of faith and love. In a desperate attempt to escape the institution where he has been committed and to exorcise the unnamed evil that haunts him, Peter Baxter runs deep into the forests of British Columbia. Hungry, injured and pursued by inescapable horror, Peter is rescued by an old Native Dreamspeaker and his mute companion. Through their teachings, Peter discovers the power of the Indian spirit world -- and the courage to face his terror alone.

Since its first publication in 1981, "Daughters of Copper Woman" has become an underground classic, selling over 200,000 copies. Now comes a new edition that includes many pieces cut from the original as well as fresh material added by the author. Here finally, after twenty-two years of gathering dust, is the complete version of the groundbreaking best-seller. In this, her best-loved work, Anne Cameron has created a timeless retelling of north-west coast Native myths that together create a sublime image of the social and spiritual power of woman. Cameron weaves together the lives of legendary and imaginary characters, creating a work of fiction with an intensity of style matched by the power of its subject.

Sarah Carson is a mother of two and grandmother of two more, living quietly on the BC coast and minding her own business and generally being quite ordinary - or so it seems until one fine day when she goes out to work in her garden and she has a stroke.From that moment, the lives of everyone around Sarah begin to change. Her daughter Lorraine puts the kids in the car and drives to Sarah's side, leaving her husband behind and wondering whether to bother going back. Sarah's other daughter Christine finds she is more willing to give up her commercial fishing licence than her lover Annwyn, although she had thought it was the other way around. The whole family faces the fact that Lorraine's young son is his own worst enemy and they may be part of the problem. Then the ripples spread out through everyone else in Sarah's life: David, a friend who has spent years in an emotional holding pattern; Bruno, a neighbour who has never declared his feelings for Sarah; and Old Annie, Wee Annie, Conrad, Tyrone, both the Jens and a host of other friends and family. Even Babalouie the cat changes his mind about what matters.This is a story about one woman's slow and painful recovery from a serious illness, a story about a family taking an honest look at itself and a story about the power of love. "It takes a whole community to raise a child," as the old saying goes, and this lucid, startling novel shows that it also takes only one middle-aged woman to change a whole community forever.

In this powerful, shocking and highly absorbing new work, Anne Cameron picks up a thread from her prize-winning novel 'Dreamspeaker', in which an eleven-year-old abuse survivor and runaway named Peter Baxter is taken from his adopted family -- two reclusive Native elders -- only to be destroyed by the child welfare system that supposedly exists to protect him. Cameron asks why more and more kids are at risk, in spite of official inquiries, public outcries and millions of taxpayer's dollars. She finds part of the answer in the 'ordinary' nuclear family, presenting a technicolour nightmare of hand-me-down dysfunction spiked with the black humour reminiscent of her 1995 best-selling novel 'The Whole Fam Damily', and another part in the child welfare system that covers the butts of everyone except the kids. Cousins Fran and Liz are children of parents who came from violent families, then grew up and started new violent families. By the time Fran has had a few children and a long procession of 'difficult' fosters, she has begun to write down her family history and to realise just how deeply troubled her family is -- back through who-knows-how-many generations.While Fran struggles to work out her past, Liz concentrates on her violin and music career and tries to forget her own traumatic childhood. But when Peter Baxter's tragic end hits the headlines, the story affects more people than just his family members and social workers. Everyone becomes involved, from his peers at the reform school to Fran and Liz and their families. What's to be done? It's too late for Peter Baxter, but in the aftermath, one by one, people can stand up to the system and make a difference. Fran and Liz, who choose different ways to survive the horror of their childhoods, remain friends and allies as they repair the damage visited on their children and grandchildren. Anna Fleming, a social worker with an impossible case load, shows what caring really means. And Jackie, a kid who's never had a break, just keeps on running. Their story makes 'Aftermath' both deeply moving and profoundly hopeful.

Donna Jean ("Deejay") Banwin and Betty Fiddick - ordinary working women and the heroines of this novel by bestselling writer Anne Cameron - are living proof that the common woman is about as common as a thunderstorm.When the story opens, DeeJay and Betty don't know each other. They're about the same age, and they're both growing up low-rent in small BC cities, in families that give 'dysfunctional' a whole new meaning. DeeJay's mother has a weakness for junk and violent men, and Betty gets left alone at home when she isn't being raped by her stepfather.But the survival instinct is a strong one, and if both women grow up angry, they also grow up tough, smart, compassionate and honest. So when their paths cross in the middle of a sexual assault case, DeeJay and Betty are ready to put their heads and hearts together to end the cycle of abuse and pain.The nightmares won't stop on that very day. But by the end of this shocking, funny, un-put-downable novel, you just know that even if the gains are small and incremental at first, nothing will ever be the same.

Jean Pritchard is a supermarket cashier, a news junkie and the mother of three: two teenagers who still live at home and another who speaks in italics and seems to have moved out. Then her kids start getting in fights for defending their Vietnamese neighbours, and her son takes up with "That Charlene," and her long-lost mother comes blasting out of the past (where Jean wishes she'd stayed) and prepares to move in, declaring that "anyone as can't hold up their end in a poker game is a person who's been subjected to child abuse." Jean concludes that if bullshit was music, "they'd be a whole brass band - and I'm the one playing the trombone."

Another popular Anne Cameron children' s story.

Ages 4 to 8 years. Raven is clever and tricky -- and greedy. In this story, she persuades her friends Gull, Cormorant, and Puffin to pick berries with her, and tricks them into doing more than their share of work, for less than their share of food. In the end, her friends find a clever way to teach Raven an important lesson.

Rowan Hanson, the extraordinary heroine of this new novel by bestselling author Anne Cameron, learns to be independent at an early age. Her mother dies in childbirth, she is raised in a floating logging camp by her grandmother, she makes her own way working for the SPCA and BC Ferries. When she gets involved with Jim, she refuses to get involved with "the ex, the kids, the house, the car, the boat or the lawyer who's apt to wind up with it all, anyway." But in the end Rowan has to take the advice her grandmother gave her twenty years earlier: "When it's your turn to take your kick at the can, kiddo, you do 'er." "Cameron's women aren't whiners. Their problems are believable, their triumphs small but fulfilling. They feel real enough, likable enough, to want to call one up togo out for coffee."-"Coast News"

In this tale, the ever-wily, ever-hungry Raven visits the generous Snipe family, in the hope of getting lots of free food. When she gets a bit too greedy, however, she finds out the Snipes have a few tricks of their own.

"Cameron doesn't stop at a wall of despair. Her stories illuminate her faith in compassion and tolerance."-Vancouver "Province" Life isn't easy in Bright's Crossing, the Vancouver Island town where these short stories are set. The locals make their living in the forests, the mines and the ocean; and it is rich strangers in far-off cities who get the profits. This collection of stories by one of Canada's best-known writers takes an honest, unflinching look at life in Bright's Crossing, through the eyes of eleven women with unforgettable stories. Like women everywhere, these characters have homes and jobs and friends. They have money problems and car problems and family problems. They work as waitresses and lawyers, fisherwomen and computer hackers. They are also the lifeblood of Bright's Crossing - the ones who look after the gomers and lugans and duck-whallopers, who raise up the children and stepchildren and grandchildren, who see the community through the worst of it, who celebrate the best of it. All of them are determined to live a better life, and they pursue it with the help of a strong will, a sense of humour, and a little bit of magic.

A novel with many heroines. . . Some are black, some white; some are babies and some grandmothers. What they have, in common is Cassidy, a wealthy and merciless plantation owner in the pre-Civil War American South, for whom the black women are slaves and the white women are concubines. Their story is the story of thousands of women of their time and place, until they put their heads and hearts together to plan a daring escape. Guided by streams and mountains, helped in their arduous journey by native Americans, sustained by their own vision of a better life, the unlikely band of women and children pushes northwest to make their new home. Still they are not free of the powerful Cassidy, determined to reclaim what he believes is his property. Their story is a tribute to the strength of women everywhere and a passionate statement about human freedom and dignity.

In these magical tales of the Celts, Cameron does for old world mythology what she has done for new world myths in her best-selling "Daughters of Copper Woman" and "Dzelarhons." Cameron adds wit and common sense to symbolism and to the mysteries of life and creation.

Anne Cameron writes with uncompromising candidness of the relationships between men and women. Her stories combine wit and gritty realism with a clear sense of the storyteller's art. Quite simply she is willing to venture into uncharted territory and speak of the things she finds there in a voice that is clear and at times unsettling. In "South of an Unnamed Creek," Cameron once again tackles mostly unexplored material in her quest for a unique feminist perspective on traditional story-telling. This novel focuses on five women from diverse backgrounds who find common ground in the dance halls of the Klondike Goldrush. From the author of "The Journey" and "Child of Her People," another unusual and enlightening approach to the frontier tale.

An extraordinary new collection of short stories from the author of "Dzelarhons" and "A Whole Brass Band." Here is an assortment of relationships: lovers, husbands and wives, children and parents, friends; and of strong individuals: Nan, whose frog causes consternation and chaos; Daleth who defies a fundamentalist sect, only to discover that it's hard to outrun the grasping wrath of fanatics; Emma, the Pie-Faced Church; and Blackie, whose dowsing skills find happiness as well as water.With all the magic of Stubby, the compassion of Dzelarhons, and the clear-sighted realism and wry humour her readers have come to love, these are stories to enchant, move, disturb, and provoke. The wish for a perfect world is in perpetual conflict with things as they are-and as they shouldn't be. SEVEN SHORT STORIES BY ANNE CAMERON: NAN must choose between an oversized amphibian and a normal life.LOUELLA seeks fame fortune as a night-club pianist.DAVE has his work cut out for him domesticating Louella.EMMA decides one day to leave her job and start her own church.And a GOOLIEGUY (did'ja ever hear of one?) brings new meaning to a lonely woman's life.

A bestseller in both Canada and the U.S. A traditional northwest coast legend for ages six to adult, told simply and gently be one of BC' s best-loved writers. ." . . should be added to any collection of materials concerned with native peoples."-"

Anne Cameron is well-known for her humourous retellings of North West Coast Indian legends - Daughters of Copper Woman and Dzelarhons. In the present collection of poetry, she enters a darker, more eerie and threatening corner of this world. "The Sickness That Has No Name" is an exploration of alienation and Indian mysticism, and of a woman's determination to live her own life.This tone of independence in the face of male dominence continues through the entire book. The section "Mother of All" names and characterizes the goddesses and women who wielded power and received worship before the rise of patriarchal societies. The litany of names, lost power, and injustice becomes an exhortation to women to regain the strength and independence they have lost. "Annie Poems," the last section of the book, celebrates a collection of friends, family, and lovers who have influenced the poet's life, culminating in a daughter's tribute of love to her mother. Cameron's humour, anger, and energy are in evidence here, as she describes everyday life and the actions people accept as 'normal.'

"Raven Returns the Water" tells of the time when the world's water disappeared. Raven went searching for it - and found it all in the belly of a giant frog!