Crossed over Jordan wide, gladness to find
The book cover image for On Canaan's Side
I've tried looking for the subject of this photograph. She is identified as: Woman: Topical Press Agency, Getty Images in the book's jacket. When I do a google image search for her, I get and audio book cover (below). The woman is clearly the same one as on the book cover, but the shot is taken from a different angle. I would think she is somewhat well-known, perhaps a 1920s actress. I will keep tracking down her identity, although for now I've come up only with blanks.
Audio Book Cover for Canaan's Side
I went to Chapters Indigo looking for a calendar, and I found instead a novel. Rather than go to the regular fiction section, I often go straight to the "bargain books" tables to see their collection. The books are randomly placed on the tables (well, it seems random to me, but I'm sure the store has its own method), so it requires a little bit of patience, and some time, to glean through the titles to find one that might interest me. Once I've found something I like, I then ask a clerk what he thinks about the book. Mostly, though, I go to the store's computer and look up the author to read what critics have written.
I think this time I got lucky. I found a book titled Canaan's Side, by Sebastian Barry published in 2011. I liked the religious allusion, and the cover's black and white photograph of a woman from the 1920s. Behind her, there is a skyline of Chicago. The book was on sale for CAN $6.99 reduced from $30. A great bargain at 75% off.
The reviews in the back are by award-winning, and best-selling, authors I've never heard of. Colm Toibin, winner of the Coasta Novel Award Brooklyn, writes:
On Canaan's Side is written with vast sympathy and tenderness. Sebastian Barry's handling of voice and cadence is masterly. His fictional universe is filled with life, quiet truth and exquisite intimacy; it is also fully alert to the power and irony of history. In evoking Lilly Bere, he has created a most memorable character.Helen Simonson, author of the New York Times bestseller Major Pettigrew's Last Stand praises the book with:
Somewhere on the second page of this book, your heart will break, and you will devour every glimmering image and poetic line as if the sheer act of reading might alter the course of Lilly Bere's haunting tale. A story of love and loss, as Irish as the white heather and as big-hearted as America itself.And Joseph O'Neill, Pen/Faulkner winner for Netherland says the book is:
A marvel of empathy and tact.These three reviewers wrote novels which are a little too multicultural for me, but that is to be expected of contemporary novels, set in contemporary times.
Barry, though, set his novel, or rather starts his novel, at the turn of the twentieth century, with the protagonist Lilly Bere leaving Ireland for America.
I cannot imagine any of the three critics' books described as: "A story of love and loss as Pakistani as the jasmine flower, and as big-hearted as America itself." Or: "A story of love and loss as Trinidadian as the wild poinsettia, and as big-hearted as America itself." Or even: "A story of love and loss as Italian as the Lily, and as big-hearted as America itself." I am being facetious, but somehow we relate more to the white heather's Irishness than we do to the poinsettia's Trinidadianess.
Barry has also written two books short-listed for the Man Booker Prize: The Secret Scripture published in 2008, about the protagonist's "...chronicle not only of her deep emotions, but also of a turbulent era in her nation’s history, from the upheavals of the Irish civil war to the German bombing of Belfast during World War II," and A Long Long Way published in 2005, about Ireland's participation in the First World War.
The Secret Scripture will be made into a film for next year.
I'm Living on Canaan's Side------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Music composed by: Mathilda Durham (1815-1901)
From: The Southern Harmony and Musical Companion
Compiled by: Wiliam Walker (1809-1875)
On Jordan’s stormy banks I stand,
And cast a wishful eye
To Canaan’s fair and happy land,
Where my possessions lie.
(Refrain)
I am bound for the promised land,
I am bound for the promised land;
Oh who will come and go with me?
I am bound for the promised land.
O the transporting, rapturous scene,
That rises to my sight!
Sweet fields arrayed in living green,
And rivers of delight!
Refrain
There generous fruits that never fail,
On trees immortal grow;
There rocks and hills, and brooks and vales,
With milk and honey flow.
Refrain
O’er all those wide extended plains
Shines one eternal day;
There God the Son forever reigns,
And scatters night away.
Refrain
No chilling winds or poisonous breath
Can reach that healthful shore;
Sickness and sorrow, pain and death,
Are felt and feared no more.
Refrain
When I shall reach that happy place,
I’ll be forever blest,
For I shall see my Father’s face,
And in His bosom rest.
Refrain
Filled with delight my raptured soul
Would here no longer stay;
Though Jordan’s waves around me roll,
Fearless I’d launch away.
Refrain
Posted By: Kidist P. Asrat