After the Bloom
Page 30
I am very grateful to the Ontario Arts Council, the Canada Council for the Arts, and the Toronto Arts Council for the grant funding I received in order to dedicate time to completing this novel.
A big thank you to Sam Hiyate and Diane Terrana at The Rights Factory for championing this project from its inception and helping me to see it through. Your insightful comments on multiple drafts helped make the novel into what it is today. Many thanks to Paul Taunton and Léonicka Valcius for looking at early versions of After the Bloom and offering valuable feedback. I relied on Yoko Morgenstern’s keen eye as a translator for certain phrases in Japanese. Warm thanks to the wonderful staff at Dundurn for all their dedication and hard work to get my novel to the finish line and into the hands of readers: Shannon Whibbs, Margaret Bryant, Michelle Melski, Cheryl Hawley, and Kate Unrau in particular. Special thanks to Kirk Howard for his warm welcome and commitment to my novel.
I’m thankful to all my family and friends for their continual encouragement, love, and support. Stories and memories about our ancestors that some relatives shared with me over the years provided an imaginative springboard, for which I will always be appreciative.
As always, immense affection and thanks to my partner, Chris Wong.
Of Related Interest
Five Roses
Alice Zorn
A sister. A baby. A man who watches from the trees.
Fara and her husband buy a house with a disturbing history that reawakens memories of her own family tragedy. Maddy still lives in the house, once a hippie commune, where her daughter was kidnapped twenty-seven years ago. Rose grew up isolated with her mother in the backwoods north of Montreal. Now in the city, she questions the silence and deception that shaped her upbringing.
Fara, Maddy, and Rose meet in Montreal’s historic Pointe St-Charles, a rundown neighbourhood on the cusp of gentrification. Against a backdrop of abandonment, loss, and revitalization, the women must confront troubling secrets in order to rebuild their lives.
Zorn deftly interweaves the rich yet fragile lives of three very different people into a story of strength and friendship.
Copyright © Leslie Shimotakahara, 2017
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise (except for brief passages for purposes of review) without the prior permission of Dundurn Press. Permission to photocopy should be requested from Access Copyright.
Image credits: hand: shutterstock.com/ElenaRay, blossoms: istock.com/piyaset
Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication
Shimotakahara, Leslie, author
After the bloom / Leslie Shimotakahara.
Issued in print and electronic formats.
ISBN 978-1-4597-3743-3 (paperback).--ISBN 978-1-4597-3744-0 (pdf).--ISBN 978-1-4597-3745-7 (epub)
I. Title.
PS8637.H525A69 2017 C813’.6 C2016-905418-7 C2016-905419-5
We acknowledge the support of the Canada Council for the Arts and the Ontario Arts Council for our publishing program. We also acknowledge the financial support of the Government of Canada through the Ontario Book Publishing Tax Credit and the Ontario Media Development Corporation, and the Government of Canada.
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J. Kirk Howard, President
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