I'll Be Watching

In a small prairie town like Argue, Saskatchewan, everyone knows everybody else’s business. Everyone knows that the Loney family has been barely hanging on — the father, George, reduced to drink and despair since the loss of his farm and the death of his wife, Margaret. And that the four Loney children do not get along with George’s second wife, the pious, bitter Effie. When George dies in a drunken stupor and Effie takes off with a traveling Bible salesman, it looks as though the children are done for. Who’s to save them when everyone in town is coping with the lingering Depression and the loss of their young men to the war? But by drawing good people to them and by rising to the occasion themselves, sixteen-year-old Ran, fourteen-year-old Nora, twelve-year-old Jim and little Addie find a way to make ends meet under the watchful eye of their ghostly parents.

Pamela Porter was born in Albuquerque, New Mexico, and she lived in New Mexico, Texas, Louisiana, Washington and Montana before emigrating to Canada with her husband, the fourth generation of a farm family in southeastern Saskatchewan, the backdrop for much of Pamela’s work. She is the author of three collections of poetry, and her poems have appeared in numerous journals across Canada and the US as well as being featured on Garrison Keillor’s The Writer’s Almanac. She is also the author of a number of children’s books, including Sky and Yellow Moon, Apple Moon (illustrated by Matt James). Her first novel in verse, The Crazy Man, received the TD Children’s Literature Award, the Canadian Library Association Book of the Year Award for Children, the Geoffrey Bilson Award for Historical Fiction for Young People and the Governor General’s Award, as well as several children’s choice awards. It was also named a Jane Addams Foundation Honor Book and won the Texas Institute of Letters, Friends of the Austin Public Library Award for Best Young Adult Book. Pamela lives near Sidney, B.C., with her husband, children and a menagerie of rescued horses, dogs and cats.