The Chrome Suite (51 page)

This is a work of fiction and I have taken certain liberties with dates of political events and with the year of publication of Matt Cohen’s
The Sweet Second Summer of Kitty Malone
, which in reality first appeared in 1979.

I would like to acknowledge the assistance of the Manitoba Arts Council and the Canada Council, and to thank the universities of Alberta and Prince Edward Island for their support during my stay as writer-in-residence.

With thanks to Patricia Sanders, Armin Wiebe, Lynn Schellenberg, and, especially, Ellen Seligman.

Sandra Birdsell was born in Manitoba and, until recently, has spent most of her life in Winnipeg. Her first novel,
The Missing Child
(1989), won the W.H. Smith/Books in Canada First Novel Award. Her second novel,
The Chrome Suite
(1992), and her most recent collection of short fiction,
The Two-Headed Calf
(1997), were both shortlisted for the Governor General’s Award for Fiction. Her two previous short story collections,
Night Travellers
and
Ladies of the House
, were reissued in 1987 as
Agassiz Stories
. Her most recent novel,
The Russländer
(2001), won the Saskatchewan Book Award for Fiction, the Saskatchewan Book Award for Book of the Year, and the Regina Book Award, and was a finalist for The Giller Prize.

Sandra Birdsell’s fiction has been anthologized and has appeared in literary journals and
Saturday Night
magazine.

She lives in Regina.