Arriving: 1909 – 1919
#14 – Audrey’s Top 25 Fiction Titles from 2011
#1 – Saskatoon McNally Robinson Booksellers Top Title List from March 2012
#5 – Edmonton Fiction Bestsellers Lists
#1 – Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Literature & Fiction > Drama > Canadian
#1 – Books > Literature & Fiction > Canadian > Drama
#1 – Books > Literature & Fiction > Drama > Canadian
Thriving: 1920 – 1939
#7 – Edmonton Fiction Bestsellers List
#8 – Calgary Herald Bestsellers List
Choosing 1940 – 1989
#4 – Edmonton Fiction Bestsellers Lists
The Book Store
Arriving: 1909–1919
Engaging, enveloping, and emotional, Arriving: 1909–1919 is the first book in the Understanding Ursula series, which chronicles eighty years of Canadian history through the eyes of the Werners, a family of German Lutheran pacifists who fled Russia to pioneer the windswept Saskatchewan prairie. Get a sneak peek
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Thriving: 1920–1939
In the second book of Corinne Jeffery’s Understanding Ursula trilogy, Gustav Werner resumes his insatiable quest to acquire more prime farmland. No one is more surprised than he when his hand is forced and his future reshaped. Will he be able to overcome steadily deepening sorrow, increasing family troubles, and Mother Nature? Get a sneak peek!
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Choosing: 1940–1989
Choosing, book three of Corinne Jeffery’s Understanding Ursula series, concludes the heart-wrenching story of five generations of the controversial and secretive Warner family. Become reunited with Amelia and Gustav, meet their many descendants, and follow them across the Canadian prairies from Saskatchewan to Manitoba and finally to Alberta. Get a sneak peek!
Lords and Lepers
Six-year-old Francine Stonehenge lives with her parents near the ocean in Cavendish, Prince Edward Island when the unthinkable happens: both her parents drown. Her aging uncles, whom she has never met, take her by bus, ferry, and train to live with them on their sheep farm in Manitoba. As she settles into her new home, Francine remains traumatized by the death of her parents, for which she feels responsible. Even the pristine peace and stillness of the prairies doesn’t keep her recurring nightmares at bay. With the loving support of her uncles and new stepmother, Francine builds friendships and before long, becomes one of a foursome with Cassandra Jamison, Jessica Yang, and Hope Harding. This epic prairie saga tells stories of bullying, elopement, prodigious talent, fraudulent greed, heartbreak, death, joy, and deep love.
As the girls lose their innocence and mature into young women, they forge lifelong friendships; share the pinnacles of success; the depths of despair; and, experience how all too often people are valued for what they have or what they do, rather than for who they are.
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The Reluctant Author
At fifty-seven years of age, Laurine Schaffer decides it’s time for her to follow her childhood dream of writing the story of her German Lutheran ancestors who fled Russia and immigrated to Canada in 1892. Growing up in an impoverished dysfunctional home environment, she realized in her adolescence that she must be pragmatic and pursue a profession that would have the potential of a sustainable career path. At seventeen, Laurine chooses to enrol in a traditional Registered Nurse training program that is affordable and provides room and board. During three years of living in a residence with other young women, she realizes her perceptions of life and people are dramatically different from many of her classmates. Although Laurine forges a successful vocation as a college professor, with the passage of time, she acknowledges that she is not being true to herself, or to her lifelong aspiration. Following an epiphany in an abandoned family cemetery on the original ancestral homestead, Laurine begins to write as a catalyst for a personal healing journey even as she fervently proclaims her reluctance to become an author.