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Shallow Rapids: A Small-Town Collision
SMART, WRY HUMOUR
Everybody knows everybody’s business in Shallow Rapids, Alberta.
On Sundays, Analiese Drucker, 20, can be counted on to lead youth class, play piano and sing soprano. On workdays, she’s in coveralls repairing broken farm implements at Drucker Welding.
Along Railway Street, Analiese displays her steel Shapes: the wind-twisting sculptures that perplex the town elders.
Behind her welding visor, Analiese considers other possibilities for her life, but keeps those thoughts to herself—until she is backed into a corner by the town’s traditionalists.
Her decision made, she loads her pick-up with welding tools and heads down Sinners’ Highway.
Improbabilities intercept Analiese’s odyssey: Greville Carson, the quantum physicist turned portrait artist; the Diviner, a green-eyed enigma raised by a biker gang; Marcella, an art collector with a subterranean gallery and machine shop; Weed, Janice Joplin’s broken-hearted yesterday lover; and the lonesome outpost of Honour where her sculptures go viral.
The only messages from home are sent by Jim Stevens, the hockey-playing farmer in love with a woman who ….
Everybody knows everybody’s business in Shallow Rapids, Alberta.
On Sundays, Analiese Drucker, 20, can be counted on to lead youth class, play piano and sing soprano. On workdays, she’s in coveralls repairing broken farm implements at Drucker Welding.
Along Railway Street, Analiese displays her steel Shapes: the wind-twisting sculptures that perplex the town elders.
Behind her welding visor, Analiese considers other possibilities for her life, but keeps those thoughts to herself—until she is backed into a corner by the town’s traditionalists.
Her decision made, she loads her pick-up with welding tools and heads down Sinners’ Highway.
Improbabilities intercept Analiese’s odyssey: Greville Carson, the quantum physicist turned portrait artist; the Diviner, a green-eyed enigma raised by a biker gang; Marcella, an art collector with a subterranean gallery and machine shop; Weed, Janice Joplin’s broken-hearted yesterday lover; and the lonesome outpost of Honour where her sculptures go viral.
The only messages from home are sent by Jim Stevens, the hockey-playing farmer in love with a woman who ….
257 pages, Kindle Edition
Published September 15, 2020
5 people want to read
About the author
Tyler Trafford
16 books5 followersI’m an erratic writer.
My Start in Journalism.
I wrote for newspapers in the 1970's and early 80's as a reporter, editor and columnist in Calgary, Australia and Florida. Discontented, I took up more entertaining (better paying) careers.
I Try Creativity.
In 1993, I began writing biographies and histories before trying a creative, original species: novels. My first work of fiction, The Story of Blue Eye was shortlisted for the 2005 Grant McEwan Authors Award.
As a Loner.
I took a break from creativity until 2010 when I began Almost A Great Escape which swept all three awards for which it was nominated at the Alberta Writers’ Guild Awards in 2014. Then I took another break.
Shallow Rapids.
I began this small-town series about Analiese Drucker, Journeyman Welder in 2020. Three books later, she still has me laughing as she discovers science accidently revealed inside love.
“Didn't know you were a closet 22 year old girl. But it works,” an agent fri friend tells me. Not true, but I like writing first person stories and, consequently, Analiese has become a voice in my head ... and a friend.
I live on the Oldman River near Pincher Creek, Alberta, where my wite, Judy, ride and I our horses in the Rockies and the Porcupine Hills.
My Start in Journalism.
I wrote for newspapers in the 1970's and early 80's as a reporter, editor and columnist in Calgary, Australia and Florida. Discontented, I took up more entertaining (better paying) careers.
I Try Creativity.
In 1993, I began writing biographies and histories before trying a creative, original species: novels. My first work of fiction, The Story of Blue Eye was shortlisted for the 2005 Grant McEwan Authors Award.
As a Loner.
I took a break from creativity until 2010 when I began Almost A Great Escape which swept all three awards for which it was nominated at the Alberta Writers’ Guild Awards in 2014. Then I took another break.
Shallow Rapids.
I began this small-town series about Analiese Drucker, Journeyman Welder in 2020. Three books later, she still has me laughing as she discovers science accidently revealed inside love.
“Didn't know you were a closet 22 year old girl. But it works,” an agent fri friend tells me. Not true, but I like writing first person stories and, consequently, Analiese has become a voice in my head ... and a friend.
I live on the Oldman River near Pincher Creek, Alberta, where my wite, Judy, ride and I our horses in the Rockies and the Porcupine Hills.
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
March 5, 2023
Tyler Trafford’s Shallow Rapids is, at its core, the story of a young woman raised in a rural conservative religious community facing the conundrum of who to marry, where to worship and what to do with the rest of her life.
But the novel is so much more. Analiese Drucker, Journeyman Welder, defies tradition when she sets off in her truck down Sinners’ Highway to practice her trade and her art, with quantum physics as her muse - meeting fascinating characters whose lives intersect and who influence the decisions she ultimately makes about her future.
Tyler Trafford skillfully wove together all the seemingly random strands of the story and made me laugh. And think.
But the novel is so much more. Analiese Drucker, Journeyman Welder, defies tradition when she sets off in her truck down Sinners’ Highway to practice her trade and her art, with quantum physics as her muse - meeting fascinating characters whose lives intersect and who influence the decisions she ultimately makes about her future.
Tyler Trafford skillfully wove together all the seemingly random strands of the story and made me laugh. And think.
January 28, 2023
Filled with characters you won't soon forget and unpredictable humour on every page, Tyler Trafford's Shallow Rapids, is such a fun read. When free-spirit Analiese Drucker goes looking for the "unexpected and the unknown", that is exactly what she - and the reader - find along her journey. Imaginative, witty, and thought-provoking, this book completely captures small town Alberta and will leave you hoping for the second book. Soon.
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews