Lesley Choyce

SALTWATER CHRONICLES

Read Lesley Choyce's 100th book today!

Saltwater Chronicles follows the adventures of the ambitious, idealistic, and brash young man (still alive and kicking inside Choyce) while the older man ahead beckons him forward with a mischievous grin. In many ways, this book celebrates the ordinary: the everyday disasters and discoveries that shape a life. Along the way Choyce has adapted to the crisis of becoming a respectable citizen. He has experienced the death of his father and of his family dog. He has helped guide his wife through cancer as they rode the North Atlantic waves and recorded a most human range of sorrows and joys.

In this, his one hundredth book, Lesley Choyce takes readers along as he writes about nearly everything under the sun from his home by the sea on the North Atlantic coast of Canada—all of it most ordinary and yet extraordinary at the same time.

Buy the Book:

Amazon | Chapters/Indigo

RECENT RELEASES

We learn from our mistakes more often than from our success. The title poem sets the stage for an unlikely and engaging examination of the minor and major events of a life. Choyce comes at these events from curious angles and presents his own singular interpretation of what the world offers up to an engaging mind. Choyce provides a virtual tour of the real and the imagined through the lens of language that speaks of both perplexity and awe.

Saltwater Chronicles follows the adventures of the ambitious, idealistic, and brash young man (still alive and kicking inside Choyce) while the older man ahead beckons him forward with a mischievous grin. Along the way Choyce has adapted to the crisis of becoming a respectable citizen. He has experienced the death of his father and of his family dog. He has helped guide his wife through cancer as they rode the North Atlantic waves and recorded a most human range of sorrows and joys.

A tale of one man’s shipwrecked life and an unlikely crew of rescuers.

Fifty-five-year-old Charles Howard has lost his long-time journalism job and has been swindled out of his life savings. Standing by the edge of Halifax Harbour on a foggy morning, contemplating his dismal future, his ritual of self-pity is interrupted with the appearance of the mysterious and beguiling Ramona Danforth. And so begins a most interesting relationship.

Milton the washing machine and W. P. (Whirlpool) the dryer are being delivered to a new home in Cole Harbour, Nova Scotia. The pair are excited to start their new jobs in the Crosby home, and are just getting settled in to the basement when “the kid” comes home from school. Sidney straps on a pair of Rollerblades, drags out a beat-up hockey net, and starts to practice. Every now and then a loud carrong echoes off W. P.’s shiny white enamel as the puck misses the net.

Jackson knows how to get what he wants. Whether it's sweet-talking his friends into buying lunch or convincing teachers to give him extensions, he feels entitled to take whatever he wants—even a day off school or a new pair of shoes. Now he's set his sights on Abby, a troubled girl fresh out of juvie who only has eyes for Bryce, the go-to dealer of a dangerous new drug called kryptonite.

Jake's friend Maria is the daughter of undocumented immigrants who have been living and working in the country for a long time. But the new government has implemented a crackdown. Maria's parents are detained and quickly sent out of the country. Maria, who was born here, decides to hide out in Jake's basement rather than risk becoming a ward of the state. But when she returns to her old apartment to retrieve her hidden birth certificate, Maria is abducted.

Included are poems about wonder and loss, simplicity and transcendence, grief and joy, history and imagination, hurt and happiness as well as the multitude of ordinary everyday things that shape our lives. The travel poems take the reader to Mt. Vesuvius and Pompeii, Dublin and Donegal, Santa Cruz and San Francisco, the Bay of Fundy and Bulgaria, Aberdeenshire and Amalfi, Paris and Rome, New Jersey and Nova Scotia.

Trevor has known since he was ten years old that he has Huntington's disease, but at sixteen he is informed that he has one year to live. One day while he's trying to figure stuff out, an old man named Plank finds him standing at a cliff by the ocean. It's the beginning of an odd but intriguing relationship. Both Trevor and Plank decide to live by Plank's Law, which is "just live." This means Trevor has to act on the things on his bucket list.

John Alexander MacNeil is eighty years old. Sharp-tongued and quick-witted, he lives alone in rural Cape Breton, but he still cooks breakfast for his wife, who's been dead for thirty years. He silently starts to question his own mind after stopping to pick up a hitchhiker, a hitchhiker who turns out to be his neighbour's mailbox.

Everything shifts, though, when Emily, a pregnant teenager, shows up at his house with no place else to go.

One day, Declan Lynch, a restless teenager, starts hearing a girl's voice inside his head. Eventually, he even begins to see her. Though he's not certain the girl, Rebecca, is real, Declan finds himself falling for her. She shows him visions of places and people he has never seen - places he feels compelled to find in hopes of meeting her.

In this hauntingly lyrical and always surprising collection of poetry, Lesley Choyce offers his unique observations of life in all its wonders. Geographically, the poems range from his home in Nova Scotia to Greece, England, Ireland, Italy and New Jersey. Along the way, the poet falls into a well, encounters a dead seal, eavesdrops on university students, drives to the English Channel, hangs up laundry, makes lasagna and has an epiphany while mailing a letter on a snowy day.

RECENT REVIEWS

". . . Broken Man on a Halifax Pier is a five-star read, and I am adding it to the 2020 longlist in the Fiction category for “The Very Best!” Book Awards." Read the full review by James Fisher for The Miramichi Reader here.

"Choyce has crafted an impressive novel about the power of the sea, the power of community and the power of memory. And he also happens to have told a fine love story." Read the full review by Douglas Gibson for Atlantic Books Today here.

" [Saltwater Chronicles provides] glimpses into the man’s heart and soul, and what we see is someone who is generous, loving and kind, and whose greatest wish is to leave the world a better place. . .We are fortunate and should be thankful that in 1978 Lesley Choyce chose to make Nova Scotia his home. " Read the full review by Ian Colford for the Miramichi Reader here.

ABOUT LESLEY

Lesley Choyce is a novelist and poet living at Lawrencetown Beach, Nova Scotia. He is the author of 99 books for adults, teens and children. He teaches in the English Department and Transition Year Program at Dalhousie University. He is a year-round surfer and founding member of the 1990s spoken word rock band, The SurfPoets. Choyce also runs Pottersfield Press, a small literary publishing house and hosted the national TV show, Off The Page, for many years. His books have been translated into Spanish, French, German and Danish and he has been awarded the Dartmouth Book Award and the Ann Connor Brimer Award.

READ LESLEY'S BIBLIOGRAPHY

READ LESLEY'S RECENT ARTICLE: Neil Peart was my friend and I was his first book publisher

READ A RECENT INTERVIEW WITH LESLEY: Keeping It "100": Teaching Fellow Lesley Choyce Publishes His 100th Book

Watch the short film: Winter Wave Riders

Surfing and Spirituality

Listen to Lesley Choyce and Father Donald Calloway's podcast on Surfing and Spirituality on CBC Tapestry

cbc.ca/tapestry

Choyce has a feeling for the young and dispossessed, for the terrible angst of adolescence and the rituals of rebellion.

The Globe and Mail

Nova Scotia's answer to the Renaissance man.

Peter Gzowski CBC Radio