New Titles

www3.telus.net/neworphicpublishers-hekkanen

New Orphic Publishers

706 Mill Street, Nelson, B.C.  V1L 4S5  Canada

To buy any of the following books, add $7.00 for postage and handling and send your cheque to the above address.

 

Of a Fire Beyond the Hills

by Ernest Hekkanen

 

A Finalist for the George Ryga Award, 2008

 

ISBN 978-1-894842-13-6       $25.00

 

Based on news stories that aired on CNN, ABC, FOX and the CBC, as well as articles that appeared in The Los Angles Times, The New York Times, The Vancouver Sun and The Globe and Mail, Hekkanen’s novel, Of a Fire Beyond the Hills, is written in the tradition of Norman Mailer’s The Armies of the Night and Henrik Ibsen’s An Enemy of the People.

 

During a time of war, an intrepid group of anti-war activists in Nelson, British Columbia decides to erect a War Resisters Monument to U.S. draft dodgers and deserters. It results in an angry outburst by right-wingers across North America, in particular by the Veterans of Foreign Wars, who encourage President Bush to condemn the project. The local Chamber of Commerce is flooded by hysterical hate mail urging Nelson’s city fathers to ban the War Resisters Monument.

 

When Ernest Hekkanen offers his front yard as a possible site for the statue, the mayor and city councilors seek to put a stop to it out of fear that it will ruin Nelson’s tourist industry. “This novel is about fear and patriotism,” Hekkanen says. “And hysteria.”

 

Of a Fire Beyond the Hills resonates not as an advertisement for [Hekkanen’s] bravery so much as a defense of it…  [H]aving born the brunt of hostility from the Chamber of Commerce types, he has struck back with his considerable writing talents, providing a frequently brilliant and often funny local history of the wave of fear, patriotism and hysteria that effectively blew the lid off Nelson’s image as a ‘laid-back’ and idyllic community.”  -  Alan Twigg, “Hekkanen’s Progress,” www.abcbookworld.com

 

Of a Fire Beyond the Hills chronicles the verbal confrontation of pro– and anti-war groups that culminates on [Hekkanen’s] front lawn… In true American fashion—in the fashion of our forefathers who dared to stand up for our rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness—Hekkanen caustically calls to accounting pro-war individuals of both Canadian and American extraction… In these difficult times when civil rights have been eroded under pressure from a government that has sought to extend its power to include torture and to fabricate bases to justify an unfounded war, voices such as Hekkanen’s remind us of what is truly at stake.” - Beth L. Virtanen, PhD, University of Alberta, www.finnala.com

 

“In Of a Fire Beyond the Hills, the latest book by Nelson author, Ernest Hekkanen, he uses the city as his philosophical soapbox to show how the West Kootenay city is representative of a larger problem moving beneath the surface of democracy—totalitarianism.”    -   Timothy Schafer,  Nelson Daily News

 

“Anyone who has lived in Nelson for a while will quickly recognize people and places depicted in [Of a Fire Beyond the Hills]. While the story was inspired by real events, Hekkanen insists that it is a work of fiction….His writing clearly evokes a particular time and place. While Nelson provides the setting for the novel, Hekkanen’s message is universal.”   -  Anna Kirkpatrick, The Express

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The Reluctant Author:

The Life and Literature of Ernest Hekkanen

by Margrith Schraner

 

ISBN 978-1-894842-10-5                     $25.00

 

“[The Reluctant Author] is both a work of investigation and of love wherein the author shares with us and exposes to us the hard shell and the soft underbelly of the writer, poet, artist Ernest Hekkanen… Schraner examines Hekkanen’s temperament, his drive, and his use of multiple media in the expression of his artistic vision. With sensitivity and discernment, Schraner captures his conflicts and his accomplishments, and presents them without sentimentality.” – Beth L. Virtanen, PhD, University of Alberta, Journal of Finnish Studies

 

 “Ernest Hekkanen is Canadian literature’s true iconoclast and most resolute maverick. He deserves to be the subject of a book.” – Bill Gaston, author of Sointula, Mount Appetite, and Tall Lives, Professor of Creative Writing, University of Victoria

 

The Reluctant Author abounds with poignant quotes from Ernest Hekkanen… It is quite engaging and well done… Hekkanen’s own writings remind me of Aki Kaurismäki’s films: They both dispense black humor and their characters are determined not to comply with the demands of ‘utterly middle-class existence.’” – Börje Vähämäki, PhD, Professor of Finnish Studies, University of Toronto, editor of The Journal of Finnish Studies

 

“I’ve published a few of Ernest Hekkanen’s short stories [in the New World Finn]. I’ve always wanted to know more about the man who concocts these tales, and why he writes them. Margrith Schraner answered nearly all my questions in this brief book about the man she knows so well.” - Gerry Henkel, editor, New World Finn

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Shadows on a Cave Wall

by Ernest Hekkanen

 

ISBN 978-1-894842-11-2              $20.00

 

     Although we never get to directly meet Sebastian Salo—who, over the course of his life, has been a prizefighter, musician, hunter, translator and fiction writer —we view him through the eyes of those who have known him, and none of them seem to have neutral feelings.

     The discovery of his body two months after his death allows rumors, stories and gossip to flow like water from a burst dam, and his chronicler, Jacques Dupuis, eager collects and collates them.

     Salo is man who rankles or delights. He is an eccentric, independence-loving Finnish-Canadian who isn’t averse to annoying people. But to those who have enjoyed his companionship, he is a loyal friend, benefactor, champion and romantic figure with a penchant for the macabre.

 

Shadows on a Cave Wall is an amusing and fascinating character portrait of a former prize-fighter, musician and fiction writer…. Hekkanen simultaneously provides a sly and revealing study of the town itself through the voices and prejudices and emotions of its citizens.” - Alan Twigg, Author Bank, www.abcbookworld.com

 

“There is a fine sense of detail in [Shadows on a Cave Wall] that makes the Rue St-Sebastien in Paris where Salo spent a year following the death of his lover, the home of Salo’s sister with its plastic Finnish Santa Claus in a grass skirt next to the television, and Salo’s home in the West Kootenay town of Bastion, British Columbia, come alive with the same vibrancy… [It] is a book that makes the readers enjoy their roles as voyeurs, never certain but always hoping that their take on events is the way it was.”  - Beth L. Virtanen, PhD, University of Alberta, Journal of Finnish Studies

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To Break the Wheel of War

by D. B. Wilton

ISBN 978-1-894842-12-9           $19.99

 

To Break the Wheel of War is a radical, global and concise exploration of human consciousness and its propensity for inner and outer conflict. It explores consciousness and culture from the parallel perspectives of Western biology and Buddhist psychology, showing how conflict evolves from primate survival drive to the evolution of language and abstract thinking which enables the dualistic mindset of absolute good versus absolute evil. Between the two, the dualistic mind struggles in a nightmare circus which Buddhists call the wheel of samsara and Western myth calls fate. The author’s faith is that we humans are capable of building a world of enduring peace, but only if we completely understand and deconstruct the wheel of war.