Iceberg Tea offers a collection of slice-of-life stories Pool penned from the vantage of her cabin on Prelude Lake, where she works as a professional freelance writer.
"This is non-fiction, but it's written very creatively," Pool said. "The way I put things together is not always exactly how things happened."
Pool blends memory with imagination as she recounts unusual everyday routines punctuated by encounters with the exceptional moments of midlife. She draws readers into the warmth and familiarity of each of her 50 compact narratives with playfully poignant prose.
“I was shocked to learn last year that I was growing a cataract on my left eye, just a tiny one, but a cataract nonetheless," she writes on page 123. "I didn't believe the diagnosis at first because I was under the impression that it was illegal for a young person in her early fifties, like me, to have such a thing."
Pool's subjects range from her clumsy attempts to embrace ancient Chinese meditation and navigate cutting edge technologies to her ongoing efforts to exorcise social insecurities and come to happy terms with her past. Other universal themes celebrate the love of family, friends, and the land.
"What I do is I write about myself and I make fun of myself quite a bit," Pool said. "The stories lighten people. If someone can have a little laugh at themselves, or at me – hey – what could be better than that?"
--Excerpted from "Twice the Excitement" by Daron Letts, published in the yellowknifer newspaper, June 4, 2010.
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