FROM THE PUBLISHER

About the Author

Elizabeth Hay was born in Owen Sound, Ontario, Canada, and was educated at the University of Toronto. Employed by CBC Radio as an interviewer and as a documentary maker, first in Yellowknife, then in Winnipeg and Toronto, she travelled as a freelance broadcaster in Latin America from 1984 to 1986, before moving to New York. She now lives with her husband and two children in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada.

SYNOPSIS

The Only Snow in Havana is a personal reflection about Canadian identity, a poetic history about snow and fur, and a travel book about origins. Mexico and New York provide the setting for an exploration of Canada's early history and the narrator's own past. Stories about the fur trade weave together with memories of feeling trapped, in a book which is as much about the play of language and ideas as it is about love and roots. The book blends autobiography, biography and history to become a new form of arctic literature: the search for a north-south passage, the discovery of "an indirect route along yellow silk, home." Winner of second prize for the Edna Staebler Creative Non-Fiction Award.

FROM THE CRITICS

Timothy Findley