Most of Mary-Jo: Selected Writings from Cabin Creek Ranch
Her house burned down, she gave birth in a neighbour's house when a blizzard blocked roads to the hospital -- for Mary-Jo Burles it was all fodder for her typewriter. "The Night Our House Burned Down" was published in Chatelaine in 1954 and "Arrival in a Blizzard" in The Family Herald in 1960. Burles collected most of her stories, published over 50 years, many in national publications. Most of Mary-Jo: Selected Writings from Cabin Creek Ranch covers everyday ranch life -- bottle feeding piglets, doing dishes and outside chores. She also includes stories she wrote: a dressmaker playing marriage counselor; a ranch wife's dream of a carpet of roses. In her fiction and her nonfiction Burles captures the kindness of neighbours and the generosity of friends. (Cover photo of Robert, Noel & Mary-Jo Burles at Cabin Creek Ranch by Lloyd Knight.)
1st Print Edition ISBN 978-0-9783192-1-2
171 pages, 15 photographs
171 pages, 15 photographs
Mary-Jo Burles - About the Author
Mary-Jo Burles has written for The Globe and Mail, CBC Radio, Chatelaine, The Family Herald, The Pincher Creek Echo, and many other publications. She is also the author of First and Second Kings, Maurice and Harold:The True Story of Eccentric Millionaires Who Lived Like Paupers. She grew up in Gladstone, Manitoba, and moved to the Porcupine HIlls near Cowley, Alberta, as a young shcoolteacher. She married Robert Burles, raised six children on the Cabin Creek Ranch, and remained in the Porcupine Hills. In 1998, after sixteen years of correspondence courses, she graduated from the University of Waterloo. (Photograph of the author by Lloyd Knight.)