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About this book
SHORTLISTED FOR THE COVER DESIGN AWARD AT THE 2016 ALBERTA BOOK PUBLISHING AWARDS!
After the accidental death of a teenaged friend, the Lansing family has split along fault lines previously hidden under a patina of suburban banality. Every family has secrets, but for the Lansings those secrets end up propelling them in different directions away from their border town to foreign shores and to prison.
Told in thirty-three flash fiction narratives, Border Markers is fractured like the psyches of its characters, all keen edges and tough language. It’s a slice of prairie noir that straddles the line between magical and gritty realism. Jenny Ferguson’s debut is a compelling collection of commonplace tragedies and surprising insights.
- interview on the Lemon Biscuits blog
- interview by Brad de Roo in Carte Blanche
- NeWest Press Audio interview with General Manager Matt Bowes
Reviews
“Border Markers is terrific and unsettling. Jenny Ferguson’s flash fiction debut serves up gritty kaleidoscopic fragments of quotidian tragedy in a small prairie city. Written in blunt and broken prose, as fractured as the lives they portray, these engrossing linked stories relate the tough noir tale of a family and its outliers, all blue-collar victims with the urge to survive – prison, ghostly hauntings, foreign countries, daily life.”
“These chapters are flash fiction wonders. Delivered in a style both economical and replete, they resonate on live borders: between one province and another, between communion and solitude, between reality and the supernatural, between despair and hope.”
"Ferguson is a master of short form... [Border Markers is] the kind of book you instantly want to re-read." full review
"Turning the pages of Ferguson's terrific first book is a clue-finding mission that leaves the reader wanting more."
"In these subtle stories, what is left out carries more weight than what is stated. The delicate structuring and balance of the flash fiction can be upset by removing a sentence.... Ferguson knows how to craft flash fiction, and, in the end, her stories become a novella told from many perspectives."
"This is a quick yet emotional read—a look at a place full of people that stay with you long after you’ve read it." full review
