l soon be available worldwide in e-book format through Signature Editions. Stay tuned for details in next few weeks.
Jane will be sharing insights and reading from Finding Home in the Promised Land, a personal history of homelessness at the Lethbridge Public Library, May 13, 2016 at 7:00 pm.
I read Finding Home in the Promised Land on the plane today. Bravo! It’s a great weaving of history, memoir and cultural analysis. Thank you for so much food for thought! Barb Howard, Author Western Taxidermy, Notes for Monday,The Dewpoint Show, Whipstock . Calgary, AB, Canada
“Jane’s memoir is more than her own story — she has an important statement to make on the value of a civilized society….Along the way,you will admire her courage and her upbeat style.” Goodreads Review Excerpt, Gordon Tolton, Author, Healy’s West, The Cowboy Cavalry, Prairie Warships, Rocky Mountain Rangers, Coaldale, Alberta, Canada.
Finished reading your book, Jane– a courageous report of the journey from anonymity to triumph. A great deal for me to think about and reconsider. I loved the link between ancestral past and renewed determination. The courage and internal resources you discovered in yourself and the idea to write a book out of such experience is inspiring. There are still stories within the story for the reader to guess and think about further. You and your book deserve deep attention. — Ruth Hart Budd, Lethbridge, Alberta, Canada.
Learning a lot from your book. As well as enjoying it, I really like your blend of history and personal journey. I hope you will not mind my saying that your writing style has matured a good deal, over the years. Denyse O’Leary, Journalist, Author, The Spiritual Brain, Faith@Science, By Design or Chance, Ottawa, Ontario, Canada.
Finding Home in the Promised Land provided authentic insight into poverty and homelessness. The author has woven her own story with the story of her ancestors and the historical context of how the poor have become social exiles in Canada. Jane Harris has done an excellent job researching this book. I hope it will challenge those who read it to reconsider the assumptions we have made in providing solutions to a social issue that shamefully continues in our country. Jan Hardstaff, Edmonton.
I just thought the book was fantastic. Thank you. Jan H., Edmonton, Alberta Canada.
It’s out! Finding Home in the Promised Land a personal history of homelesssness and social exile is now in print and heading to bookstores. I will be at the Whistler Writers’ Festival, October 16-18th. More Tour and launch news to follow soon!
SEPTEMBER RELEASE UPDATE: Finding Home in the Promised Land: A Personal History of Homelessness and Social Exile is the fruit of Jane Harris’s journey through the wilderness of social exile after a violent crime left her injured and tumbling down the social ladder toward homelessness –for the second time in her life—in 2013. Her Scottish great-great grandmother Barbara`s portrait opens the door into pre-Confederation Canada. Her own story lights our journey through 21st Century Canada.
She asks why Canadians fell into accepting diminished dreams, and ignoring the obvious—that trauma and poverty are inextricably linked, and it is social exiles who fall through the cracks. She asks why Canada, a nation of exiles driven to create their own Promised Land came to accept first poor houses; then soup kitchens, food banks, shelters, and silent suffering class of working poor? Why did charity, another word for love, become cold bureaucracy? She uncovers that sad truth, that the taxes and charitable gifts the prosperous among us pay as tolls to avoid looking at the poor, fix nothing. Instead, they fund a poverty industry that keeps the dispossessed in an exile thornier than any back bush squatter’s camp. But she also uncovers a path out of the bureaucratic wilderness that could eliminate social exile in Canada.
Jane Harris turns complex research into engaging scenes and easily understood messages.Finding Home in the Promised Land is her second book to be published by J. Gordon Shillingford Publishing. The first Eugenics and the Firewall: Canada’s Nasty Little Secret was published in 2010.
Jane has also contributed to two Canadian anthologies. Her articles about business, personal finance, history, faith, politics and social issues have appeared in more than a dozen publications including the Winnipeg Free Press, Canadian Capital, The National Post, Alberta Views, Alberta Venture, Lethbridge Herald, and The Anglican Planet.
She is a member of the Writers’ Union of Canada and the Writers’ Guild of Alberta.
Jane Harris, Author 