Sightlines
a portrait of a town,
in linked stories
“ A very promising debut by a very talented writer ”
– Guy Vanderhaeghe
“ Spareness, clarity, and elegance of style ”
– Sandra Birdsell
A small-town girl sets fires in a neighbour’s pasture.
She fantasizes about the havoc they cause the tiny imaginary families who live in the grass. Thirty years later, city kids start a fire that partially destroys her home in Saskatoon.
Children bury small treasures deep in the garden. Their mother buries something else.
An elderly couple, forced to lie on the floor facing in different directions as small-time, teenage thieves tramp through their house, consider their relationship with their own daughter.
A young woman who decides to leave her wheelchair-bound father in Flat Hill in the 1970s so she can have a life of her own, is seen single and childless in 1989, striving to keep her connection with friends whose lives are enriched by their own families.
Sightlines builds a complex portrait of the fictional town of Flat Hill.
As the reviewer for the Globe and Mail commented, “with each new story, as names and relationships and landmarks recur and stick in the mind, a kaleidoscopic drama gathers and offers gratifying connections.”
“Leona Theis writes of the accidents of small rebellion, courage and kindness that have the power to change who we are. With a spareness, clarity, and elegance of style, Leona Theis knows what needs to be large and small. Like the name of the town, Flat Hill, these stories are a study of opposites, mature and intelligent observations that show us ourselves, and our own points of departure. ”
“No matter how accomplished and subtly rewarding each story in Sightlines is, what is finally most remarkable is how the individual stories fit together, demonstrating that in Leona Theis’s case the whole really is far greater than the sum of its parts. A very promising debut by a very talented writer.”