The Endless Knot

Not many people attend church on New Year’s Day. In addition to our family and Zack’s partners and their families, there were fewer than thirty congregants. The worshippers were evenly split between smartly dressed ladies from the seniors’ home next door and street people who wanted a place of warmth on a cold day. Mieka and Zack’s partner, Blake Falconer, were our witnesses. I carried a spray of white orchids and Zack had a boutonniere of marigolds.

Not surprisingly, the sermon was about beginnings, and James was pensive as he discussed the fact that Zack and I had chosen this first day of the New Year to begin our marriage. He quoted a Kierkegaard scholar who wrote that human existence requires real passion as well as thought, and James said that he was certain two people as passionate and thoughtful as we were could make a fine life together. He ended his sermon by saying that in a world in which the one certain thing is that we live in absolute uncertainty, celebrating the beginning of a new marriage on the first day of a new year demanded a leap of faith. Then he looked directly at Zack and me. “Leaping into uncertainty is terrifying,” he said, “but I saw your faces when you joined hands to take your vows. You two will land on solid ground. Just remember not to let go of each other.”

 If you enjoyedtreat yourself to all of the

Joanne Kilbourn mysteries,

now available in stunning new

trade paperback editions

and as eBooks

McCLELLAND & STEWARTwww.mcclelland.com

www.mysterybooks.ca

GAIL BOWEN’s first Joanne Kilbourn mystery, Deadly Appearances (1990), was nominated for the W.H. Smith/Books in Canada Best First Novel Award. It was followed by Murder at the Mendel (1991), The Wandering Soul Murders (1992), A Colder Kind of Death (1994) (which won an Arthur Ellis Award for best crime novel), A Killing Spring (1996), Verdict in Blood (1998), Burying Ariel (2000), The Glass Coffin (2002), The Last Good Day (2004), The Endless Knot (2006), The Brutal Heart (2008), and The Nesting Dolls (2010). In 2008 Reader’s Digest named Bowen Canada’s Best Mystery Novelist; in 2009 she received the Derrick Murdoch Award from the Crime Writers of Canada. Bowen has also written plays that have been produced across Canada and on CBC Radio. Now retired from teaching at First Nations University of Canada, Gail Bowen lives in Regina. Please visit the author at www.gailbowen.com.