Jan, a Canadian farmer’s daughter bent on reinventing herself, meets Dick, a worldly fellow from Swinging London. It’s an unlikely match, but they use their incompatibilities to create an unconventional life together. Jan Miller's new memoir Life with Dick highlights the ability we all have to persevere with grace and humour through difficult or awkward times. It is an entertaining look at a couple’s almost 50 years together and the unintentional lessons they gave their unsuspecting children.
$21.95 ISBN 978-1-7750092-4-5 paper
WILFRED AND ME is the story of a profoundly deaf man deprived of communication and education for the first 20 years of his life in an Ontario Hospital School. He and Jan meet in Picton, Ontario, in a new institution when a unit is opened for deaf patients. Theirs is an unusual friendship that continues today.
The early institutional years have left huge gaps in Wilfred’s ability to cope. He doesn’t fit in either the hearing world or the Deaf one. Despite great odds, however, he is in time able to live independently, make friends, and work, including at Shopper’s Drug Mart for 16 years.
The barrier of language and problems with literacy make it impossible for Wilfred to know and share his journey. Jan is able to fill in some of the gaps with the experiences they share. This is a story about relationships, suffering, and courage. To read Wilfred and Me is to understand the changes one man is able to make and to believe there is untapped potential – more than we normally imagine – in us all.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Jan Miller began working in the early 1970s
in an institution as part of a new unit for patients who were deaf. She went on
to work as a professional sign language interpreter for 25 years in legal,
educational, medical, and business settings. Her first book, Dear George, was published in 2013. She lives in Verona, Ontario, with her husband, Dick.
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Available at Novel Idea Bookstore, 156 Princess St, Kingston, ON K7L 1B1, 613-546-9799, novid@kingston.net
Order copies at woodpeckerlanepress@gmail.com or through Amazon.
Published by Woodpecker Lane Press
3 Woodpecker Lane, Kingston, ON K7K 5E2
www.woodpeckerlanepress.com
