Wanderlust

In “The Lookout”, A Canadian woman travels to Lascaux in search of a thesis only to discover the truth of the Cro-Magnon man’s passion for artistic expression, upsetting the findings of the Abbe Breuil.

Slavery and heroics are part of the Vikings’ early wandering in an excerpt from Brenda Niskala’s novel, Pirates of the Heart.

Linda Biaslotto tells a tale of an aging spinster in an Italian village, who plots against her dying mother while facing the revelations of accidents of her past.

In “Redwing”, by Shelley Banks a sentimental journey to the homeplace named for the red-winged black bird brings an exiled woman home to a secret kept safe by her own mother.

In James Trettwer’s inward-journey “Godsend” we hear of a disgruntled worker in a potash company suffering from alcoholism who loses his job, meets his alter ego, goes in and out of rehabilitation, only to fly in the face of his own self-destruction.

Surrounded by chauvinistic co-workers and locked into a static workplace, a young man heeds the call to freedom and exotic Ethiopia in James Trettwer’s “Leaving with Lisa”.

In Byrna Barclay’s story, “The Jigger”, just before the Regina Riot of 1935, a farmer’s daughter is seduced by the call of the wild, and takes a night ride on a railway handcar with an itinerant handyman who reinvents himself at every stop along the road.

Bogged down by responsibility, a young mother heeds the call of wanderlust while on a road trip with her husband, driven by memories of the thrill and dangers of hitch-hiking as a student.

Annette Bower’s story “Solitaire” takes the readers on a ride of beating the devil and euthanasia and how to face the last great journey into death with courage, humour, and grace.

The need to flee and left the “somewhere else” motivates the sexual awakening in a young girl in Linda Biasotto’s “Flying”.