Hailing from Kamsack, Saskatchewan, author Myrna Dey will be attending this year’s Great Big Book Club Weekend to talk about her Giller Prize-nominated novel Extensions.
The novel is both a historical murder-mystery and a modern narrative as the main character, an RCMP officer named Arabella, delves into her grandmother’s past, uncovering the horrible truths about her family’s origins.
Dey said she was inspired to write the book after finding letters written by her own grandmother.
“Just to find these hundred year old letters, I thought ‘well who is this woman,’” she said. “My youngest daughter is a member of the RCMP. I thought somehow I’d like to join these two narratives.”
Dey, a 70-year-old grandmother, took over ten years to write the book. And though she’s written a few other works, Extensions was the first to be published.
“I’ve always been writing,” she said, adding that she’d written short stories, personal essays, and a previous book that was never published.
“It took three years, practically, until it came into print. It took them a year to decide,” she said, speaking of her Edmonton-based publishing company, NeWest Press.
For more on this story, read an upcoming edition of the Times-Herald.
