Artist & Author
Trees are Life, Water is Home
Through the Elephant Ears
Released January 29, 2021
A near drowning of a new friend makes Kat an unwilling guardian for life, a child pecked by a rooster lays a blanket of guilt Kat struggles to shed, the death of a neighbour after a bird flies into their house leaves Kat seeking understanding and a mother that stops talking to her leaves her fighting for self-esteem. In these 16 interconnected short stories Kat must navigate adolescence surrounded by poverty, depression, alcoholism, and small-town ideologies. Add in a couple of come-from-aways, and everything Kat thought she knew about the world, about people and about love changes. Will she find a way to ease her personal burdens? Will she escape?
Preview
The Author: MJ Dominey
A native of Cape Breton Island, Marla Dominey grew up in the small coastal town of Louisbourg, the last stop on the Trans-Canada Highway. She left the island in her early twenties to live on the mainland where she stayed for many years. After a few years residing in Quebec, she now finds herself in southern Ontario. However, her passion has always remained with her home province. "Nothing beats the ocean, the salt air and the terrain of evergreens and moss." MJ brings her experiences growing up next to the sea to her writing and to her visual art. She has been writing fiction for many years, working on one story or another alongside her paintings of the sea. After many edits, Through the Elephant Ears has finally come to fruition. In the future MJ hopes to return to Nova Scotia and her love, the ocean.
"I feel bad for the crows on this cold February morning. I watch them from the bathroom window, as I stand on the back of the tub and grip the edge of the splintery, brown windowsill. The crows fly from the trees to the ground and back again, sometimes landing on the frozen pond behind our house. No one has cleared the snow away and their tiny bird feet leave stickman prints on the surface.
I look over to our neighbours’ house. I’m not sure what I expect to see. Death has not changed it on the outside. The house does not mourn or shroud itself in blackness, it does not collapse to the ground and cry to God how unfair He is, how utterly unfair life is. The house is just a house." -excerpt from Birds in Through the Elephant Ears
