GOLD MEDALIST- Best Canadian fiction- western region (IPPY Awards) Abe Williston- the bush pilot Ted Corrigan and Jack Redsky- childhood friends Diana Corrigan and Jenny Redsky- mothers spanning two cultures Buy your copy! Amazon Amazon.co.uk Froogle Best Canadian price Ed Zaruk's website  For twenty years Abe Williston flew all over the world.  Now, at the controls of a small airplane owned by Michael Redsky, he was headed back to Kenora, Ontario, returning to close friends he'd left behind as Native culture was being sacrificed on the whiteman's altar of bureaucracy.  Would there be something to keep him from leaving a second time?  The memories of forgotten friendships held no answers. Set in simpler times against the background of Northwestern Ontario's Lake of the Woods, ALTAR and THRONE  explores the friendships between Natives and whites, tested by a world turning more complex as cultures collide.  Click here to read  Altar and Throne First Five Chapters.PDF www.EdZaruk.com

Through Storyteller Eyes
QUESNEL CARIBOO OBSERVER
Through storyteller eyes
By Annie Gallant | November 04, 2008
Almost 20 years ago, Ed Zaruk gave up his expensive hobbies and informed his wife Marian he was going to be a writer.

Since he always loved reading, Zaruk figured a couple of pencils and a few sheets of paper would be his investment.

But his first novel, which now lays in a drawer, unpublished, took 10 years to complete.

“Writing is the hardest work I’ve ever done,” Zaruk said.

A comfy couch in a hotel lobby, yellow lined pad of paper and a few free hours are all he needs to write.

“I drive a lot in my regular job,” Zaruk said.

“That’s where I work out my ideas.”

That first manuscript was painstakingly perused by Marian where spelling, grammar and structure were scrutinized.

“I have a stack of rejection letters for that novel,” Zaruk said.

He wrote what he loved, a thriller novel.

However, what possibly is the most influential exercise during that process was the couple began attending writers conferences, including the prestigious conference in Jackson Hole, Wyo. where they rubbed shoulders and picked the brains of some of North America’s best novelists.

Many of which were women.

“I started reading women authors and switched from plot driven work to character development,” he said.

“It was totally out of my genre.”

A chance reading of a true story about a pilot who flew a Norseman bush plane, carrying Indian children to residential schools, sent Zaruk on a journey to a completely different world.

On their way to Jackson Hole in 2004, Ed waited anxiously for his wife to finish reading what he had been working on for six months.

“I was prepared to put it in the drawer with the other three manuscripts,” he said.

“She loved it.”

But Zaruk was far from finished, the subject matter was controversial, the character development and relationships complex.

The novel was taking on a life of its own and Zaruk followed its lead.

Wanting to set the right foundation for this body of work, research played a big part in his writing, digging for the authentic details about a lifestyle almost gone.

Zaruk found through the residential school system and urbanization of First Nations people, much of the Native culture was lost.

His first chapter, where white boy Ted meets Ojibway Native Jack, took three months to develop.

“I wanted to portray the universal language of children at play,” Zaruk said.

“It took a long time.”

Alter and Throne took almost two years to complete.

Set in Kenora, Ont., Zaruk developed the Native personalities based on his personal experience there as an aviation mechanic, stories from his mother who lived around Native communities before residential schools and his research.

Ed and Marian didn’t always agree on how the story developed. In fact, his wife demanded one very tragic scene be removed, but Zaruk remained firm.

“I go where the characters take me,” he said.

“The characters are my friends. That scene had to remain in the story.”

Alter and Throne carries the reader through the challenging times when the Canadian government, in partnership

with the church, removed Native children from their historical and cultural roots and placed them in the hands of sometimes corrupt and cruel individuals.

Zaruk weaves his story based on fictional, but authentic characters in an emotionally gripping tale where friendships and family relationships are tested, and sometimes fail.