High Water Mark — Lesley Choyce

High Water Mark is an anthology of short fiction from some of the finest writers of Atlantic Canada over the last forty years. Included are writers from various communities throughout the region and stories that reflect a wide range of writing talent from older and younger writers.

Nineteen authors have contributed work to this long-awaited collection representative of the literature of the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. Among the contributors are Sheldon Currie, Harold Horwood, Maxine Tynes, Patrick O'Flaherty, J.J. Steinfeld, Budge Wilson, Carol Bruneau, Steven Laffoley, Wayne Curtis, Michael Pacey, Guyleigh Johnson and Chris Benjamin among others.

Fiction means many things to many people. As Life of Pi author, Yann Martel, noted, “Fiction is the selective transforming of reality. The twisting of it to bring out the essence.” Tim O'Brien, author of The Things They Carried, echoed this when he wrote, “That's what fiction is for. It's for getting at the truth when the truth isn't sufficient for the truth.” Atlantic Canadian writers know instinctively that “truth” is not always what it seems and that it varies widely among cultural groups. Here, in heartfelt and often raw prose, a wealth of gifted authors from different backgrounds investigate their truths through a fictional lens, often pushing the boundaries of the genre to uncover and hold up to the light what is real and what is true. High Water Mark is a compendium of stories that indeed attempts to get at the essence of life in the Canadian Far East in all its rich diversity while exploring some of the hidden “truths” that are not always obvious in our day-to-day lives.