Wigford Rememberies

Wigford is a small town in rural Southwestern Ontario, home to a cast of recurring characters: Buzz, a drunk-driving father of two; his wife, who should have married Bert Walmsley instead; Happy Henry, a devout, socially inept apostle who loves to play the organ; Elmer, a stroke survivor. Wigford Rememberies tells this community's stories through an impressionistic series of vignettes. The language is inventive, innovative and exciting, and whether describing mucking out the pig barn -- "there in the dust and the sweet smells of grain and straw and the heavy brown odour of shit so strong it makes you sneeze" -- or helping a drunk articulate how to manipulate God's forgiveness -- "'if I gave my heart to Jesus -- right there on my deathbed the minute before I died -- he'd forgive everything an I'd go up into Heaven and be saved just as much as the other guy who never did nothin' wrong at all with no difference?'" -- Harness wields words with an eye for detail, musicality and style. Visceral, reflective and lyrical, Wigford Rememberies is a poetic evocation of mood and epiphanic realisations, and will resonate with anyone who has ever confronted suffering, love or the unknowable.