Double Dutch [Paperback]

Intensely imaginative and darkly emotional, the weird and wonderful stories inDouble Dutchdeftly alternate between fantasy and reality, transporting readers into strange worlds that are at once both familiar and uncanny — where animals are more human, and people more mysterious, than they first appear.

Shape-shifters, doppelgangers, and spirits inhabit the extraordinary worlds depicted in Trunkey’s stories: a single mother believes her toddler is the reincarnation of a terrorist; Ronald Reagan’s body double falls in love with the first lady; a man grieves for his wife after a bear takes over her body. The collection also includes moving tales grounded in painful and touching reality: a young deaf girl visits Niagara Falls before she goes blind; an elephant named Topsy is killed on Coney Island by Thomas Edison in 1903; and a woman learns the truth about her son’s disappearance while searching with her husband in the Canadian Rockies.

This enchanting and, at times, heartbreaking debut collection of stories hails the arrival of an exceptional new literary talent.

Laura Trunkey’sfiction has been published in journals and magazines across Canada, and was included in the anthologyDarwin’s Bastards: Astounding Tales from Tomorrow. Her non-fiction has garnered two honorable mentions at the National Magazine Awards. She is the author of the children’s novel,The Incredibly Ordinary Danny Chandelier(2008). She lives in Victoria, BC, with her husband and son.

. . . accomplished excursions into the weird and offbeat. Toronto Star

“The natural and spirit worlds collide in Double Dutch and the result is a series of enchantments, all powered by Trunkey's uncanny imagination and tremendous humanity.” — Zsuzsi Gartner, author ofBetter Living Through Plastic Explosives