Judith Elaine Cowan

Palimpsests Judith Elaine Cowan

These are five stories from the nineties. A combative elderly woman, raising geese and goats on a small Ontario farm, is moved by the autumn light and haunted by a half-remembered poem. She's just beginning to struggle with memory. But she's also troubled by a more basic concern: her grown children refuse to eat the food that she produces. In a story from rural Quebec, a heavy horse no longer needed for ploughing is turned out into a field, has an unexpected encounter, and gets to live on for a different destiny. Two unrelated stories explore the battle of the sexes, written and re-written since antiquity and as unsettled as ever. Whether the fairy-tale is an adventure, a lucky escape, or a love affair, prince charming can be difficult to identify, and a girl's best friend is a well-maintained motor vehicle parked not too far off. A final story outlines a scholarly skirmish played out among an ill-assorted group of language teachers. Challenged by the byzantine administration of a small provincial university, they'd like to lay claim to the tradition of academic freedom.