Authors: Melanie Murray
“The Flight of Quetzalcoatl” is from
Technicians of the Sacred: A Range of Poetries from Africa, America, Asia, and Oceania
, 2
nd
ed., Jerome Rothenberg, University of California Press, 1985. Reprinted with permission.
Archibald Macleish, “Ars Poetica,”
Archibald MacLeish: Collected Poems 1917-82
, Houghton Mifflin, 1985. Copyright © 1985 by The Estate of Archibald MacLeish. Reprinted by permission of Houghton Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.
The quotation “Home they brought her warrior dead …” is from Tennyson’s poem “The Princess,” in
Tennyson: Poems
, Knopf, 2004.
The story of Isis comes from James Frazer’s
The New Golden Bough
, S.G. Phillips, 1959.
Niobe’s story appears in
Bulfinch’s Mythology: The Age of Fable
, by Robert Graves, Doubleday, 1968.
Chase Twichell, “Saint Animal,”
The Snow Watcher Poems
, Ontario Review Press, 1998. Reprinted with permission.
“The dove is never free” is from Leonard Cohen’s song “Anthem” on the CD
The Future
, Sony, 1992.
Sun Tzu,
The Art of War
, Dover, 2002.
“Childhood is the kingdom where nobody dies …” is from Edna St. Vincent Millay’s poem “Childhood Is the Kingdom Where Nobody Dies,”
The Norton Anthology of Literature by Women
, eds. Sandra Gilbert and Susan Gubar, Norton, 1985.
Reverend Jane’s verse is from
Peace in Every Step
, by Thich Nhat Hanh, Bantam, 1992.
Rita Dove’s poem “Demeter Mourning” is in
Mother Love: Poems
, Norton, 1996. Copyright 1995 by Rita Dove. Used by permission of W.W. Norton and Company, Inc.
Inanna’s story is from
Sumerian Mythology
by S.N. Kramer, Harper Torchbooks, 1961; and
Myths of the Female Divine Goddess
, by David Leeming and Jake Page, Oxford, 1994.
The stories of Isis and Demeter come from
The New Golden Bough
by James Frazer, S.G. Phillips, 1959.
The Theodore Roosevelt quotation is in Nichola Goddard’s letter in
Outside the Wire: The War in Afghanistan in the Words of Its Participants
, eds. Kevin Patterson and Jane Warren, Random House Canada, 2007.
T.S. Eliot, “Little Gidding,”
Four Quartets
, Faber and Faber, 1942.
G.W.F. Hegel,
The Phenomenology of Mind
, translated by J.B. Baillie, Dover Publications, 2003.
I am deeply indebted to many people for their contribution, advice and support during the writing of this book: my friend Mary Ellen Holland, who encouraged me to write it and bolstered me every step of the journey; Jeff’s comrades—Scott Lang, Clay Cochrane, Sean Connors, Jason Francis, Craig Etherlston, Stephen Ker, Chris Henderson, Tim Haveman—who told their stories about Jeff as a soldier, his final mission and the aftermath of his death; Joselyn Morley, Pauline Rankin and Alan Hunt, who relayed their memories of Jeff during his decade at Carleton University.
Lee Windsor, David Charters and Brent Wilson’s book,
Kandahar Tour: The Turning Point in Canada’s Afghan Mission
, was an indispensable source of information on Task Force 1-07’s training and its operations in Kandahar province.
I am grateful to Karen Connelly, my mentor at the Humber School of Creative Writing, for her invaluable guidance; to my editor, Craig Pyette, for his unfailingly sound, insightful editorial suggestions; to Doris Cowan for her astute copy editing; and to Denise Bukowski, my literary agent par excellence.
I wish to thank Okanagan College for granting me financial assistance and release time to work on this project, as well as my English Department colleagues for their steadfast
encouragement, especially Frances Greenslade, John Lent, Alix Hawley and Craig McLuckie.
Finally, this book could not have been written without the involvement and loving support of my family: my son, Damian, who drove me around the Scottish Highlands; Marion, Russ, Mica, Sylvie and Marilyn—who delved into their deep wells of memory and allowed me to be the
seannachie
.
MELANIE MURRAY
grew up in the military town of Oromocto, New Brunswick, during the 1960s while her father was a soldier at CFB Gagetown. She has been living in Kelowna, British Columbia, since 1987, teaching English at Okanagan College and raising her two sons, Damian and Gabriel. Captain Jeff Francis is her nephew.
For Your Tomorrow
is her first book.
www.melaniemurray.ca
.