A Caribbean-Canadian Chronicle by Robert Edison Sandiford
Sand for Snow
Sand for Snow
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Sand for Snow: A Caribbean-Canadian Chronicle,, Robert Edison Sandiford, 188 pp., 5x 8, Memoir, November 2003
ISBN: 0-919688-79-9 (paper). . .$15.95
ISBN: 0-919688-81-0, (Bound) . . . $26.95
Robert Edison Sandiford moved from Canada to his parents’ native Barbados in 1996. He went for “wife and work” — his new bride was a Bajan, and he had landed an editor’s position at the leading daily newspaper. Yet his journey ‘Back Home’ also led to a series of insightful and often poignant meditations on relationships, island life, and the decline of his father, diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease twelve years earlier. “Coming out of the Caribbean as these stories did, they could not have been written in any other time or place,” says Sandiford in the Preface. Part travelogue, part memoir, Sand for Snow: A Caribbean-Canadian Chronicle is a thoughtful, revealing, and often humorous trip to a most unexpected destination.
Praise for Sand for Snow
“This unpretentious, charming book reminds us of the power of observation—and of reflection—clearly articulated. ”
—Halifax Sunday Herald, Dec. 2004
“…The book for me changed almost immediately into the classical immigration story, where it takes an incredible leap of faith (and not lunacy) to leave the known for the unknown: the familiarity of the country of his birth and the support systems — albeit regardless of the fact that they have failed him — to [Barbados] the country of his parents' birth, a country he knows only from visits and stories.”
—Groove, 2004
“Raised with a dual sensibility, Sandiford is able to see Barbadian
society with unfamiliar, unglazed eyes, and report with frank yet discreet
honesty its strengths and failings.”
—H. Nigel Thomas, Montreal Community Contact, 2004
“This book...makes me wish that I'd been much closer to my father.
It makes me wish that he'd always been there for me or that I could have
been there for him....”
—Ricky Jordan
Author Robert Sandiford
Author Biography
Robert Edison Sandiford is the author of Winter, Spring, Summer, Fall: Stories, Attractive Forces and Stray Moonbeams. His articles have appeared in Caribbean Travel & Life, The Globe and Mail, The Gazette, The Comics Journal, and The Antigonish Review, among other publications. From 1996 to 2001, he was a columnist and an editor at the Nation newspaper in Barbados.
The author’s latest award (December ‘03 — National Independence Festival of Creative Arts) was a Governor General’s Award for Literary Excellence for a published short story called "Reckoning."
Also by the Author
The Tree of Youth and Other Stories, Robert Edison Sandiford, 136 pp., 5 1/2 x 8 1/2, November 2005, Short Stories — ISBN: 1-897190-04-2, (paper) ... $17.95 — ISBN: 1-897190-05-0 (Bound) ... $28.95
“In his new environment, Sandiford ponders what it means to be Bajan, and what it means to be Canadian, and how best to reconcile the two within himself.... What follows is part travelogue, part memoir, and an entertaining critique and celebration of island life and city life.”
—McGill News, Summer 2004
“Sandiford’s strength lies in provocative profiles.... ”
—Montreal Gazette, 2004
“Migration is one of the great themes of Caribbean writing.... But few narratives describe attempts by descendents of these 20th-century emigrants to return to the Caribbean of their parents. Sand for Snow is a thoughtful, modest, and quietly moving exploration of that reverse voyage. ”
—Caribbean Beat, Jul/Aug 2004