A Book of Great Worth (31 page)

I worked hard, with the stories’ structure and a sort of old-fashioned expository style, to make them
feel
like memoir – like truth – but, of course, most serious fiction writers do that all the time. We employ technique to garb our fabrications in an illusion of truth. We want the reader to buy into our fictions. I also worked hard to
imbue these stories with a tension created by that un
stated question of how the narrator came to know not just the stories, in their broad strokes, but the fine details.

Most importantly, I tried to honour my father. The best way to do that, I knew, was to get it right.

– Dave Margoshes

Acknowledgements

Most of the stories in this collection have appeared previously, sometimes in somewhat different versions, in literary magazines, in anthologies and in earlier collections.

* “A False Moustache” appeared in
Prism international
, 1985, and in
Small Regrets
(Thistledown Press, 1986).

* “Feathers and Blood” appeared in
Out of Place
(Coteau Books, 1991) and
Long Distance Calls
(Coteau Books, 1996).

* “A Book of Great Worth” appeared originally in
University of Windsor Review
, 1994, and subsequently in
Due West: Thirty Great Stories from Alberta, Saskatchewan and Manitoba
(NeWest/Coteau,Turnstone, 1996),
96: Best Canadian Stories
(Oberon Press, 1996) and
Long Distance Calls
(Coteau Books, 1996).

* “A Distant Relation” appeared in
Long Distance Calls
(Coteau Books, 1996).

* “Music by Rodgers, Lyrics by Hart” appeared in
Bix's Trumpet and other stories
(NeWest Press, 2007). Used with permission of the publisher.

* “
Lettres d’amour
” appeared in
Fiddlehead
, Spring 2008.

* “The Wisdom of Solomon” appeared in
The Dalhousie Review
, Autumn 2008, and subsequently in
The Journey
Prize Stories 21
(McClelland & Stewart, 2009), and on
line at www.theglobeandmail.com. It was a finalist for the 2009 Journey Prize.

* “The Barking Dog,” “The Family Circle” and “The Farm Hand” appeared in
The New Quarterly,
Winter 2009.

A Book of Great Worth
won the 2010 City of Regina Writing Award.

My thanks to the editors and jurors responsible, and special thanks to Thistledown Press and NeWest Press.

Thanks also to Geoffrey Ursell and Nik Burton for their belief in this project, and to Geoffrey for his sure editing hand.

About the Author

Dave Margoshes has published more than a dozen books of fiction, poetry, and nonfiction. His collection of stories,
Bix’s Trumpet and Other Stories
, was Saskatchewan Book of the Year, won the Regina Book Award and was a finalist in the ReLit Awards in 2007. His three novels are
Drowning Man, I Am Frankie Stern
, and
We Who Seek: A Love Story
. He has published four other story collections, five volumes of poetry and several non-fiction works, including a biography of Tommy Douglas.

He has had stories and poems published in dozens of magazines and anthologies in Canada and the United States (including six times in
Best Canadian Stories
), had work broadcast on CBC, and given readings across the country. His awards include the Stephen Leacock Prize for Poetry. He was also a finalist for the Journey Prize.

Some of his stories and poems spring from his days as an itinerant journalist. Margoshes worked for daily newspapers in eight cities, including San Francisco, New York, Calgary and Vancouver, covering everything from politics to murder to cat shows. He's also taught journalism. He currently lives near Saskatoon.

Berte and Harry Margoshes, some time in the Nineteen Thirties