Let the Sufi Flout
Surviving the Summer of ’57 in the Yukon
by Lynn Arnason Friesen

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At home in Toronto in 1997, sixty-year-old Maude Thorvaldson is jolted back to the most pivotal chapter of her life when a radio interview with an old friend unlocks a rush of Yukon memories—and the girl she used to be. It’s the summer of 1957, and nineteen-year-old Maude heads north to work on a federal experimental farm at Mile 1019 on the Alaska Highway. The only woman among six summer students, she’s hungry for “experience” before she returns home to a tidy future—and an engagement waiting in the wings. With no women’s quarters, she’s placed in a couple’s spare bedroom, then pulled into the orbit of the “Bunkhouse Boys,” becoming the focus of their petty rivalries, rough humour, and pent-up sexual energy. As the days stretch longer under the northern lights, Maude is pulled between Takasaki (“Tak”), a brilliant, lonely researcher whose friendship with Maude threatens to explode into something else, a handsome RCMP constable who keeps drifting in and out of her life, and Roscoe, an unstable farm worker who fixates on Maude in ways she can’t laugh off. Told through letters, diary entries, and sharp asides from Maude’s older, wiser self, Let the Sufi Flout is a funny, frank, and deeply human coming-of-age story about desire, freedom, and the messes we make while learning how to live.

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The late Lynn Arnason Friesen kept extensive journals and diaries throughout her life, from childhood in Saskatoon to later years in Toronto. Like her main character, Maude, she dreamed of producing a substantial piece of meaningful writing one day. Taking the old adage “write what you know” to heart, she returned to a pivotal season from her youth—her time working on an experimental farm in the Yukon—and transformed those experiences into the inspiration for this novel.

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Contributors

Author

Lynn Arnason Friesen