Old Spookses' Pass, Malcolm's Katie, and Other Poems

Old Spookses' Pass, Malcolm's Katie, and Other Poems is a remarkable collection from one of Canada's foundational poets. Isabella Valancy Crawford writes with an untamed imagination, her poems populated by rugged cowboys, fierce pioneer women, and landscapes so vivid they seem to breathe. The title poem follows a group of horsemen through a mountain pass at night, their campfire stories giving way to something darker in the wilderness around them. Other verses sing of love won and lost against the backdrop of the Canadian Rockies, of home and the ache of distance. Crawford's voice is unlike any other 19th-century poet: unsentimental yet deeply feeling, with a storyteller's instinct for the dramatic moment. Her work offers readers a rare glimpse into Canada's literary imagination before it was fully formed, a voice both ancient and startlingly new.