Keeping the Peace (PDF)

If Colette Maitland were a musician, youd say she had perfect pitch."e;IsabelHugganA soldiers wife struggles to reconnect with her daughter after herhusband is killed overseas. A baby abandoned at the rectory door inflames atownwith gossip. A dog is shot. A heart attack survivor perplexes his familywith a newfound sense of religious euphoria, while a nursing home volunteerstruggles with the bad behaviour of one of her veteran patients.Compassionate, clear-eyed, probing grief and insularity, Colette Maitlandsshortfiction debut shows us the price of keeping the peace in a small town.Colette Maitlandwrites like a dream, with a touch that's compellingly subtlealmost deceptivelyso, since in these stories, dangerlurks around every corner, and trouble isresolved in the most surprising and unsentimental ways. By the end I felt I'dexperienceda literary sleight-of-hand. I had to double-check that I wasreading a debut collection and not the latest in a series of Maitland'swiseand lovely books.Charlotte Gill"e;Here are the stories you didn't know about the people you do know, and about strangers too, those people you pass on thestreet without giving them a second thought. ColetteMaitlandhas the inside track on the abiding truth that it is our storiesthat make us human, for better or worse. Keeping the Peace is a superb debut collection by a writer to watch."e;DianeSchoemperlenThese residents of Tim Horton's Nationstruggle with illness, death and depression and hang on as best they can withtrue grit. Raymond Carvermeets Norman Levine on these pages, which herald theappearance of a fine new writer of everyday realism.Antanas SileikaColette Maitland is the winner of a Kingston Literary Award, the WFNB Literary Competition, and the Ten Stories High Short Story Competition.