I have a couple of suggestions: first, it needs a serious edit. Points are often made twice in a row or in too many words, and three quarters of the adverbs and adjectives could go. Second, the women on Salavandra are portrayed as dedicated, loving homemakers or, in Mary’s case, shallow and grasping. Women have played powerful roles in revolutionary organizations, background roles with high risk, like running messages, carrying supplies to hide-outs and painting illegal graffiti, as well as front-line roles–leading actions, carrying weapons and yes, burning warehouses. Why are Salavandra’s revolutionaries all men? Even if Mary had emerged from her funk at the sight of the gun on the table and shot Phillip, I would have felt a bit better.

However, that said, as a board member for the Maritime Province’s Beacon Award for Social Justice Literature, as well as a member of the investment coop for Just Us Fair Trade Coffee Roasters in Grand Pre, NS, I am truly delighted to find this novel here. Thanks to Mr Erski for writing and reading it and to Podiobooks for making it available. I’m off to download The Coffee Crusade!

I really believe that free information opens rather than closes doors, which is why I posted my novel here on Podiobooks.com. One of the issues I ask my students, as they read the novel, is to discuss the term “digital divide” that quickly becomes apparent in the first three chapters. It’s revealing to me that here we all are, podcasters consumers, hooked in with high-speed access to more information than we can possibly use, when most of the world is so far behind us in this respect. I think Salavandra touches on this issue pretty strongly (in a novel context, of course).