Under A Living Sky (10 page)
“True,” said Mary, giggling up at the bright blue sky, “but there's lots left to find. And every last one of them is stashed in a very good spot.”
In the early 1990s, my father-in-law, John Doerksen, who had been a prairie farm boy himself during the Great Depression of the 1930s, told me the kernel of this story. I thought about that little oat-filled doll all summer. What family situation would produce the chain of events he described? What would make a child bury her sister's doll? I pried for more details. John claimed it had happened to people a few farms over from where he lived. He had no other details to give. Finally I sat down and wrote out my own explanation. I believe he was proud of my attempt, although he did not survive to read the book.
I can't (really, I can't) let this book go to press without thanking my wife, Karen, who read less-readable versions but always believed. Likewise, my friend Fred Meissner read and commented on the text with a poet's heart. In this group I must include Maggie de Vries at Orca Book Publishers, whose iron will and light touch graces each page.
I'd also like to thank Heather Marshall and Debbie Culbertson and Professor Keith Harder for believing in this book and doing everything they could to help get it to the public. Thank you to Neil Hultin for those juicy bits of historical detail. Thanks in particular to my snap-happy sister, Theresa, for the photo shoot in Calgary, and thanks generally both to Karen's family and my own family for their interest over the years.
Finally, I haven't forgotten the friends who have read or listened to the story and have been moved, as I have, by Mary and Judith and a homemade doll with no nose or hair.
And thank you too, Reader, whether your nose be satisfactory, whether your hair is coming in or falling out. May you be moved as well.
Joseph Simons
was an avid reader as a child and remains one to this day. He is intimately acquainted with farm life, right down to the calluses on his hands. He loves Saskatchewan, where he lived in the early 1980s, except for the winters, which, he says, “Demand another kind of thinking about one's place in the world.” Still, even in those winters, Joseph rode his bike to work every day. He based
Under a
Living Sky
on a story that his late father-in-law told him, a story that he could not shake.
Under a Living Sky
is his first book. Visit him at
www.josephsimons.ca
.