THE ONLY SNOW
IN HAVANA

At once a personal reflection about identity, a poetic history of snow and fur, and a travel book about home.

Mexico and New York City provide the setting for an exploration of Canada’s early past and of the narrator’s own connection with the North. Stories about the fur trade weave together with memories of a broken marriage as Hay navigates a new love and a new life.

The blend of autobiography, biography and history becomes a new form of arctic literature about the search for a north-south passage and “an indirect route along yellow silk, home.”

Imaginary, inventive, filled with its own light in rather a similar way to an Impressionist painting. It has a unique gleaming quality.     George Woodcock

The writing is a constant joy, alive with simple images that strike to the heart, a clarity of expression that is like clean air, observations that stop on the page. The book floats in the mind after it is read, like poetry.     Canadian Book Review Annual

Captivity Tales and The Only Snow in Havana are marked by a style and sensibility that have the same fullness and restraint found in Glenn Gould’s music and David Milne’s art.     The Ottawa Citizen

Order from your local bookstore,
or from Cormorant Books. cormorantbooksinc@bellnet.ca

The Only Snow in Havana, Cormorant Books, 1992,
ISBN 0-920953-80-8