Coming Soon – Date TBA
In a wind-scoured refugee camp on the edge of the Jordanian desert, Yasmeen Abadi counts her world in absences—her parents, grandparents, her home. At thirteen, with her seven-year-old brother, Jaafar, she crosses Syria in search of a refugee camp and her only remaining relatives. Arriving near death and without news of her aunt and uncle, their future is uncertain. Until they meet Leah, a young aid worker adrift from her own unfinished past, who makes a home for them.
When armed men arrive in the night and carry Leah and Yasmeen across an unseen border, the fragile order of the camp gives way to a harsher captivity. In the silence between interrogations and long stretches of waiting, they form a quiet, stubborn connection—part refuge, part reckoning.
Their shared existence narrows to small acts: a story remembered, a hand held in the dark, and Leah’s refusal to let them forget who they were before. What unfolds is a struggle for survival, and a fragile, defiant persistence of care in a place designed to extinguish it.
I was there at her beginning, and I was there at her end. In 2012, I stood at the edge of her graving berth, imagined the men, the sound of pneumatic riveters, the clang of hammer against steel, the musicality of an Irish curse. In 2023, I stood at the edge of the gravelled paths, then followed the curved line of black granite markers in Fairview Lawn Cemetery in Halifax, Nova Scotia.. I’m speaking, of course, of Titanic. April 15, 2028, will mark the 115th anniversary.
It’s easy to forget the majority who sailed on the Titanic. Some names live on: Lady Duff and Sir Cosmo Duff Gordon, John Astor, Helen Churchill Candee, Margaret Brown, Archibald Butt, Captain Edward Smith. But this story isn’t about them. It’s about the forgotten. It’s about questions. It’s about answers. It’s about the myriad theories that still arise. The how, we know, but the quintessential question can—will—never be answered. The why. The net of thrall around her still kills. And Canadians, as much as anyone else, have been inextricably entwined with her life, her death and beyond.
Grizzly Bear Press 