Winter's Tales Author Reading Series: Valerie Compton, new PEI novelist

Valerie Compton, born and raised on PEI, has recently published her first book, Tide Road, a historical novel set on the Island. She will give a public reading on Monday, April 11, at 7:30 pm, in the Faculty Lounge, Main Building at UPEI. A book signing and reception will follow. Her reading is sponsored by the UPEI English Department.

Sonia, the main character of Tide Road, is a widowed farm wife and former lighthouse keeper. When her daughter Stella disappears, leaving her toddler and husband behind, Sonia faces the possibility that her daughter may not have slipped through the ice. She may have been pushed. Sonia's past, a flotsam of lost dreams, bruised hopes, and buried love, wells up to meet her. Confronted with her own history of choices and failures, Sonia is compelled to revise her perception of her daughter's life and dramatically change the way she lives her own.

Through Sonia's memories, struggles, and transformation, Compton vividly re-creates a half-century of authentic Island life. Her characters vibrate with the reality of human experience. Compton is a strong new voice of the Island, joining J.J. Steinfeld, Michael Hennessey, Elaine Hammond, David Helwig, Hugh MacDonald, Orysia Dawydiak, Margie Carmichael, Steven Mayoff, and others imaginatively evoking Prince Edward Island in their fiction.

Compton now lives in Halifax, where she writes and teaches fiction writing. Her stories have appeared in numerous literary journals, and her articles and reviews have appeared in The Globe and Mail, The National Post, Gourmet Magazine, The Ottawa Citizen, and Quill & Quire.