Ripples on a Puddle

About the Book

The setting for Ripples on a Puddle is a fictional village in Northern Ontario called Tamarack. The opening story "Tamarack" describes the village and the assortment of small businesses bordering the main throroughfare which also serves as a main provincial highway. The characters who appear in the stories are fictional but some events are based on actual inhabitants and their lives as observed by the author who, at a young age, was a self-confessed eavesdropper. In her later years she chronicles the events as she remembers them. At times the stories are sad because they speak to tragic events. At other times they are humorous incidents in rural life. We meet these living, vulnerable people at extraordinary moments in their lives and in situations that ring true. The element of time plays an important role in some stories. Melissa MacGregor appears in several as both a young girl and as a a waspish old woman greeting death in the final story, "Bitter Herbs."

There are some surprises in these tales of people who find themselves in situations of infanticide, lesbianism and doomed love, all a part of the human spirit that often brings stories that are memories of a bygone era that reflect the language, colloquialisms, customs and the simplicity of rural life.

About the Author

Helen McCourt Mentek was born in Orillia, Ont. and moved in 1941 with her family to Sault Ste. Marie, Ontario. After graduating high school, she moved to Ottawa, Ont. where she met her husband in the Canadian Air Force. After the war they moved to Windsor, Ont. and married and she became the mother of three children. She attended the University of Windsor studying English Literature, creative writing and poetry. Ripples on a Puddle is her first collection of short stories.