Featuring Yolande Essiembre, Rebecca MacFarlane, and Sandra Bunting
Why do your favourite Canadian authors write the books they write? Let’s find out in this exclusive feature here at The Miramichi Reader.
Yolande Essiembre, author of Long-Lost Mom (Tellwell Talent, 2022)
As an unwed mother who became pregnant in the 60s and gave up a baby for adoption, I spent most of my life hiding my shame, and guilt. When my son found me after forty-six years, I was very much afraid. However, I agreed to be in contact with him. After communicating through email for about a year and a half, I made the trip to Vietnam to meet him.
Several months after my son found me, I discovered I was not alone in my experience; ours was part of a greater story. Historical data from Statistics Canada (1999) reveals that in Canada almost six hundred thousand infants were born to unmarried mothers and were recorded as illegitimate births between 1945 and 1971. Because of social, cultural, and religious beliefs of the time, most unwed mothers lived in shame and were pressured to put their children up for adoption. At this time adoption records were sealed. Very little information was revealed to the adoptive parents, and no information was available to the adoptees or to the biological parents. I was one of these unwed mothers, and my son was one of these babies.
Upon returning home from Vietnam, I learned that as of April 2018 in our province of New Brunswick, all adoption records would be opened. Adult adoptees and birth parents would now be able to access the information. My heart went out to all the long-lost moms still in hiding, and sons and daughters searching and wanting to know the truth. I also thought about adoptive parents who might worry how this would affect their lives. From the bottom of my heart, I felt a calling: you must write a book.
Long-Lost Mom is a story about hope, about overcoming shame and self doubt, about healing and about making peace with the past. Writing this book has been life-giving, fulfilling, and healing. I am so grateful to have said yes to living the experience.
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Yolande Essiembre is an author, coach and workshop facilitator who lives in New Brunswick, Canada. Her passion for understanding human behaviour and a lifelong interest in personal and spiritual growth led her to return to university as an adult to pursue her dream of becoming a therapist. She holds a master’s degree in Theology, a certification in social work, a certificate in religious studies, as well as accreditation in various types of counseling and coaching. She is the mother of four children and grandmother to two beautiful granddaughters.
Rebecca MacFarlane, author of Dying Season (independently published, 2021)
It feels odd to say that I wrote a post-apocalyptic novel about an alien invasion for my kids, but my two boys were very much the inspiration for my novella Dying Season, as well as its soon-to-come follow up novel, Winterhaven.
Dying Season was previously published by Solstice Publishing in 2016, under my old pseudonym.
I took a hiatus from writing shortly after being published with Solstice. I’ve been a writer for as long as I can remember, but after being published, I realized I didn’t quite know my voice, or what I really wanted to say with my work, and I knew I needed to figure that out.
My second son was born in March of 2020, right at the start of the pandemic. I had oodles of time to sit at home with a sleeping baby in my arms. I started writing on my phone as a way to cope with the isolation. Once I started, I couldn’t stop. I wrote the first draft of a novel (which I hope to publish sometime in the near future), all while rocking my son. And I started thinking about Dying Season again.
I learned a valuable lesson through the process of revamping that story. Slowing down, or giving yourself a break, is sometimes necessary for growth. This time around, I knew I had something. My vision was clearer. I knew what I wanted to say.
Dying Season tells the story of Jerry, a retired military veteran who loses his family to what is at first mistaken for a deadly virus. When he finds a young girl wandering alone, he decides to help her. Jerry saves Hannah from being accosted by a pair of unsavory characters with questionable intentions, and in turn that connection with another human being ultimately saves him. Hannah stops him from ending his own life. There is a parenting theme to the story that carries on into my upcoming novel, Winterhaven, and both books explore grief and loss, which I think are really important things to talk about. Too often grief is sort of swept under the rug. It’s uncomfortable. It’s hard. Sometimes we don’t want to discuss it, and I think that often leaves people feeling very lonely. I do hope someone out there might read my little story about the end of the world and feel less alone. More importantly, I hope to leave my boys, and whoever else might read my books a message: never let go of hope, no matter what.
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Rebecca MacFarlane is a lifelong lover of fiction and long-time horror writer. She resides with her partner and two children in Atlantic Canada.
Sandra Bunting, author of Lesser Spotted (Gaelog Press, 2023)
During the pandemic lockdown I listened to a daily livestream video broadcast by the American poet Billy Collins, who I had met before in Ireland. Billy played jazz, read his poems and talked about poetry for an hour each evening. I find his work a change from the many angry voices and victim accounts so prevalent in contemporary poetry. Not that those poems don’t have an important place, but I loved Collins’ work for its deceptive simplicity, close observation and subtle humour. The broadcasts were generous of him. They got me and many others through that difficult time. It also inspired me to gather my poems into my second collection.
I was always a wanderer but I fell in love with a man who followed me back to Miramichi, and I subsequently followed him to Ireland where we lived for 25 years. This book — Lesser Spotted — is an exploration of family life where minor events and day-to day observations take on greater significance. Emotions from joy to grief are portrayed through tiny details to make them more poignant.
Lesser Spotted takes the reader on a journey through Ireland from ‘the magical’, to a land pelted by rain, to the greedy years of the Celtic Tiger. It continues on to my native Canada and places farther afield.
I chose the title Lesser Spotted for several reasons. Because of climate change many species of birds are endangered, and we often don’t miss them until they are gone. Likewise often in the busyness of our lives, we fail to notice quiet beauty and small incidents.
“Because you/ are no longer there when I shout Look at Me.” (from Montreal’s Swing into Spring)
I also have a connection to birds because of my surname; thus the flock of snow buntings on the cover.
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Sandra Bunting writes poetry, fiction, non-fiction and journalistic articles. She grew up on the east coast of Canada and was awarded a BA in Radio and Television Arts from Toronto Metropolitan University and an MA in Writing from NUI, Galway, Ireland. After working for CBC News, Toronto, she moved to Europe and lived in the north of France, Madrid, Dublin and Galway. She returned to Canada in 2011 and established herself in Montreal and Northern New Brunswick.
