Shortlisted: The Canadian Library Association's Book of the
Year for Young People, 2011 (WINTER SHADOWS)
WINNER: The Silver Nautilus Award for 2011,Teen Category: From their site: "We look for distinguished literary and heartfelt contributions to spiritual growth, conscious living, high-level wellness, green values, responsible leadership and positive social change as well as to the worlds of art, creativity and inspirational reading for adults, children, teens and young adults."
Winners' books were featured at Book Expo America in 2011. (WINTER SHADOWS)
Nominated: The 2013 Young Reader's Choice Award
WINNER: The Silver Nautilus Award for 2011,Teen Category: From their site: "We look for distinguished literary and heartfelt contributions to spiritual growth, conscious living, high-level wellness, green values, responsible leadership and positive social change as well as to the worlds of art, creativity and inspirational reading for adults, children, teens and young adults."
Winners' books were featured at Book Expo America in 2011. (WINTER SHADOWS)
Nominated: The 2013 Young Reader's Choice Award
sponsored by the Pacific
Northwest Library Associaiton, made up of libraries from Alberta, British
Columbia, Idaho, Montana and Washington.
Shortlisted: McNally Robinson Book for Young People Award -
Older Category 2011 (WINTER SHADOWS)
The story takes place in the heavy snows of Manitoba along the deep river banks of the Red River.
When Cass finds the star brooch once belonging to Beatrice Alexander, visions lead her to Beatrice's diary. Do the girls really communicate across time, or is it all in their imaginations?
Besides developing the stories and connections between Beatrice and Cass, I also had the pleasure of researching and looking at the food and entertainments that might have occurred at this festive holiday time.
A lot of people don't realize until they've read Winter Shadows that the entire story is spun around a Victorian Christmas in an early settlement along the Red River; as well as a modern Christmas story in the same stone house along that river.
The Christmas of 1856 becomes a catalyst for even more tension between Beatrice and her stepmother Ivy. And when Ivy's son, Duncan Kilgour, arrives on the scene, even more tension develops - of a different kind.
In the modern world, in the very same stone house that Beatrice lived in all those years ago, Cass is also living with a difficult stepmother, Jean, and her annoying daughter Daisy, as well as Cass's dad - who wants this to be the start of a new and happy life for all of them together.Cass's mother died two years before, and Cass resents her stepmother Jean taking over her mother's place. This is not a happy family looking forward to Christmas.
My research for the settings for Winter Shadows took me to rural Manitoba St. Andrew's, a parish on the Red River in Manitoba, which still has some of the old stone houses from around 1850.
The exterior of my house in the novel, Old Maples, is fashioned after that of Captain Kennedy's house along the Red River (now a tea house and museum) and some of the interior comes from a typical small whitewashed Red River squared-logged house; the sort where the farmers and former servants of the Hudson's Bay Company lived; and also the Governor's House at Lower Fort Garry, a few miles away - as Beatrice's father had once been a man of rank in the Hudson's Bay Company.
Photo by Margaret Buffie
Governor's Kitchen - Lower Fort Garry
Above is hearth in the Governor's house at the fur trading post which gave me an idea of what the old hearth could look like in Old Maples - which Cass (in modern times) sees for the first time when the workmen renovating the old house tear off the wall that is hiding it. She finds an important link to the past inside the sooty hearth wall. There are a lot of hidden things in that old house! Even a ghost...
Photo by Margaret Buffie
Governor's Kitchen - Lower Fort Garry
Photo by Margaret Buffie
Photo by Margaret Buffie
Photo by Margaret Buffie
Photo by Margaret Buffie
Captain Kennedy's House was the house I used
for Beatrice's home, but much altered of course!
Photos by Margaret Buffie
Captain Kennedy's Desk
A Red River farm house - similar to the
one Duncan Kilgour lives in.
Photo by Margaret Buffie
EXCERPTS FROM SOME MEDIA REVIEWS: to give you more idea of the story through reviewers eyes!
CANADIAN LITERATURE: A Quarterly of Criticism and Review: June 2011
The female protagonists ....at the brink of independent adulthood ... are aware that they have to think seriously about the consequences of their decisions. ... Beatrice, and Cassandra have extra challenges because of their dysfunctional families, and they feel isolated from their contemporaries who appear to come from more stable and conventional ones. Their fathers’ inability to emotionally support or protect them is the catalyst towards change in their lives.
Margaret Buffie’s Winter Shadows tells the intertwined stories of two Manitoba girls who are separated by time but united by parallel situations. Their timelines intersect at similar moments in their lives when they are trying to adjust to reconfigurations of their families, brought about by the remarriage of their fathers. The strained relationships with their stepmothers and stepsiblings form the bulk of the crises in the novels, and at moments of particular emotional distress, the girls have visions of each other that give them strength and encouragement; the past and future influence each other for the better. The modern Cassandra is worried she is losing her mind and seeing ghosts, but Beatrice, who lives in the nineteenth century (and is later revealed as Cassandra’s ancestor), is closer to her First Nations roots and more open-minded about visions. Although the wicked stepmother paradigm seems to be followed initially, the novels move towards better comprehension of the stepmothers’ characters, not surprisingly misinterpreted by the teenagers at the beginning. The novel’s hopeful ending comes from more effective communication and greater understanding of others’ positions, an understanding that leaves the protagonists with an improved, if not an ideal relationship with the stepfamily....Cassandra and Beatrice are sympathetic protagonists whose stories of eventual personal empowerment are thought-provoking. The well-told narrative and the argument that critical thinking leads to compassion and just action towards others make ... attractive choice for young adults.
American Library Assoc's BOOKLIST: January 2011
Hatred for their wicked stepmothers bonds two girls living in a stone house in Manitoba, Canada, more than 150 years apart. Grieving for her dead mother, high-school senior Cass is furious that she has to share a room with the daughter of her dad’s new, harsh-tempered wife. Then she finds the 1836 diary of Beatrice, who is part Cree and faces vicious racism as a “half-breed” in her mostly white community. In her journal entries, Beatrice weighs her feelings toward the town minister, who she thinks about marrying, and the free-thinking Duncan, who may just be a troublemaker. As Cass bonds with her classmate Martin, she begins to see Beatrice in her dreams and even writes advice to Beatrice in her diary. The alternating narratives are gripping, and the characters are drawn with rich complexity; even the stepmothers are finally humanized. Readers will be pulled in by the searing history of bigotry as well as the universals of family conflict, love, and friendship. Grades 7-10. --Hazel RochmanQUILL AND QUIRE, DECEMBER 2010:
Vicky Metcalf Award-Winner Margaret
Buffie returns with a breathtaking novel
that is part realism, part time-travel fantasy,
The female protagonists ....at the brink of independent adulthood ... are aware that they have to think seriously about the consequences of their decisions. ... Beatrice, and Cassandra have extra challenges because of their dysfunctional families, and they feel isolated from their contemporaries who appear to come from more stable and conventional ones. Their fathers’ inability to emotionally support or protect them is the catalyst towards change in their lives.
Margaret Buffie’s Winter Shadows tells the intertwined stories of two Manitoba girls who are separated by time but united by parallel situations. Their timelines intersect at similar moments in their lives when they are trying to adjust to reconfigurations of their families, brought about by the remarriage of their fathers. The strained relationships with their stepmothers and stepsiblings form the bulk of the crises in the novels, and at moments of particular emotional distress, the girls have visions of each other that give them strength and encouragement; the past and future influence each other for the better. The modern Cassandra is worried she is losing her mind and seeing ghosts, but Beatrice, who lives in the nineteenth century (and is later revealed as Cassandra’s ancestor), is closer to her First Nations roots and more open-minded about visions. Although the wicked stepmother paradigm seems to be followed initially, the novels move towards better comprehension of the stepmothers’ characters, not surprisingly misinterpreted by the teenagers at the beginning. The novel’s hopeful ending comes from more effective communication and greater understanding of others’ positions, an understanding that leaves the protagonists with an improved, if not an ideal relationship with the stepfamily....Cassandra and Beatrice are sympathetic protagonists whose stories of eventual personal empowerment are thought-provoking. The well-told narrative and the argument that critical thinking leads to compassion and just action towards others make ... attractive choice for young adults.
American Library Assoc's BOOKLIST: January 2011
Hatred for their wicked stepmothers bonds two girls living in a stone house in Manitoba, Canada, more than 150 years apart. Grieving for her dead mother, high-school senior Cass is furious that she has to share a room with the daughter of her dad’s new, harsh-tempered wife. Then she finds the 1836 diary of Beatrice, who is part Cree and faces vicious racism as a “half-breed” in her mostly white community. In her journal entries, Beatrice weighs her feelings toward the town minister, who she thinks about marrying, and the free-thinking Duncan, who may just be a troublemaker. As Cass bonds with her classmate Martin, she begins to see Beatrice in her dreams and even writes advice to Beatrice in her diary. The alternating narratives are gripping, and the characters are drawn with rich complexity; even the stepmothers are finally humanized. Readers will be pulled in by the searing history of bigotry as well as the universals of family conflict, love, and friendship. Grades 7-10. --Hazel RochmanQUILL AND QUIRE, DECEMBER 2010:
Vicky Metcalf Award-Winner Margaret
Buffie returns with a breathtaking novel
that is part realism, part time-travel fantasy,
and part coming of age tale. Winter
Shadows focuses on two young women who
live in the same Manitoba home a century and a half apart.....
Shadows focuses on two young women who
live in the same Manitoba home a century and a half apart.....
This communication across time obviously
draws on the conventions of fantasy, but these elements
arenever forced or implausible, and there is plenty of
suspense and energy to sustain the two alternating narratives."CANADIAN MATERIALS, OCTOBER 2010:
The past setting of this novel is simply stunning. Buffie immerses the reader in the cold, the food (and the effort it took to find and prepare it), the influence of the church, and above all, the intermingling of the Scottish and native and English cultures in the settlement near Selkirk, MB. She is clearly sympathetic to the native/Metis wisdom and connection with the land, using many Cree words (that are both easily understood in context and explained in a glossary).....Buffie is a master of the ghost story, carefully allowing Cass and Beatrice to drift in and out of each other's lives in convincing fashion. The convention of the diary allows Cass to connect the dots and learn more about her ancestors. The dialogue both in past and present is authentic, revealing character and moving the action along.DR. ANDREA DEAKIN
Okanagan College Library NOVEMBER 2010:
....The 1856 setting is particularly effective and engaging. You feel the cold, you watch the preparation of a feast, you learn about the society and its expectations, and you become engaged in the lively character of Duncan Kilgour and his odd courting. The culture, the time, the expectations of that time, is all brought vividly alive.
Beatrice and Cass interact, sense each other, and affect each other in a thoroughly convincing way in this engaging novel."KIRKUS:
Buffie’s characters and the conflicts they face are deeply engaging...Of special interest is the rare portrait of a multiracial community when informal marriages among British and First Nations people were common.
Other excerpts by online reviewers: "It's been a few years since I read a Margaret Buffie novel and the wait was so worth it! I have always admired her writing. She makes a ghost story believable and engaging. In her new book, she introduces her readers to Cass and Beatrice, ancestors born one hundred and fifty years apart, but with a strong connection.....There is so much here to attract readers. It is historical and informative about Manitoba's past. It deals with the issues that blended families face, in the past and in the present. It helps us understand the need for communication during difficult times, and it offers up characters who will live long in our memories. What more can we ask?" Sal’sfictionaddiction.com
"It was an enjoyable read, well written with wonderful characters, a great setting, and an interesting plot to which many can relate. It was a little like a contemporary Cinderella meets Jane Eyre, with a pinch of Mr. Darcy." Mimosa Effect.
"I found the story line intriguing. It's like two different novels are being merged into one using the diary as a vehicle. There's a special ending to both stories and I won't give away what happens. Get yourself a copy and read this charming tale of two young women coming of age. You won't be disappointed." bkfaerie blog
"I adored WINTER SHADOWS. As I read it, it completely consumed me. ...this is a beautifully crafted book, and I thoroughly enjoyed every page. 5 stars"bookreporter.com
suspense and energy to sustain the two alternating narratives."CANADIAN MATERIALS, OCTOBER 2010:
The past setting of this novel is simply stunning. Buffie immerses the reader in the cold, the food (and the effort it took to find and prepare it), the influence of the church, and above all, the intermingling of the Scottish and native and English cultures in the settlement near Selkirk, MB. She is clearly sympathetic to the native/Metis wisdom and connection with the land, using many Cree words (that are both easily understood in context and explained in a glossary).....Buffie is a master of the ghost story, carefully allowing Cass and Beatrice to drift in and out of each other's lives in convincing fashion. The convention of the diary allows Cass to connect the dots and learn more about her ancestors. The dialogue both in past and present is authentic, revealing character and moving the action along.DR. ANDREA DEAKIN
Okanagan College Library NOVEMBER 2010:
....The 1856 setting is particularly effective and engaging. You feel the cold, you watch the preparation of a feast, you learn about the society and its expectations, and you become engaged in the lively character of Duncan Kilgour and his odd courting. The culture, the time, the expectations of that time, is all brought vividly alive.
Beatrice and Cass interact, sense each other, and affect each other in a thoroughly convincing way in this engaging novel."KIRKUS:
Buffie’s characters and the conflicts they face are deeply engaging...Of special interest is the rare portrait of a multiracial community when informal marriages among British and First Nations people were common.
Other excerpts by online reviewers: "It's been a few years since I read a Margaret Buffie novel and the wait was so worth it! I have always admired her writing. She makes a ghost story believable and engaging. In her new book, she introduces her readers to Cass and Beatrice, ancestors born one hundred and fifty years apart, but with a strong connection.....There is so much here to attract readers. It is historical and informative about Manitoba's past. It deals with the issues that blended families face, in the past and in the present. It helps us understand the need for communication during difficult times, and it offers up characters who will live long in our memories. What more can we ask?" Sal’sfictionaddiction.com
"It was an enjoyable read, well written with wonderful characters, a great setting, and an interesting plot to which many can relate. It was a little like a contemporary Cinderella meets Jane Eyre, with a pinch of Mr. Darcy." Mimosa Effect.
"I found the story line intriguing. It's like two different novels are being merged into one using the diary as a vehicle. There's a special ending to both stories and I won't give away what happens. Get yourself a copy and read this charming tale of two young women coming of age. You won't be disappointed." bkfaerie blog
"I adored WINTER SHADOWS. As I read it, it completely consumed me. ...this is a beautifully crafted book, and I thoroughly enjoyed every page. 5 stars"bookreporter.com
( I found this lovely little Victorian Christmas card to "Beatrice sends best wishes for a Merry Christmas" and felt it had to be from her!)
Winter Shadows is available in hardcover and paperback in most local bookstores (like McNally Robinson's here in Winnipeg) - and through online bookstores such as Chapters, Barnes and Noble, Amazon and more. It is also available as an eBook on most online bookstores in their eBook sections..
New Review:
https://historicalnovelsociety.org/reviews/winter-shadows/
FROM THE HISTORICAL NOVEL SOCIETY
https://historicalnovelsociety.org/reviews/winter-shadows/
FROM THE HISTORICAL NOVEL SOCIETY
Winter Shadows
Cass's father’s new wife is distant, comes with a bratty new stepsister in tow, and spouts clichés with every breath. Meanwhile, in 1856, the same stone house is home to Beatrice, just returned from teaching in Upper Canada to another beloved father, and another stepmother who neglects Beatrice and her Cree grandmother. Expected to marry, Beatrice soon faces a choice between two very different men.
Connected by Beatrice’s diary, the two young women become ghosts to one another. Cass wonders if her “shadows” are signs of clinical depression and insanity, while Beatrice, raised in the Metis culture with a strong belief in the powers of dreaming, accepts Cass as a spirit girl. Over the coming Christmastime, the worlds converge in decision and ultimate harmony.
Lyrically told, with compelling characters, Winter Shadows illuminates the stigma of mixed ancestry in 1856, as well as the stigma of depression today. Great storytelling.
