Return to Solitude + Chocolate Chip & PB Banana Bread

A book about a special place, and a special bread that is more like a cake.

Part 1: Good Book

Return to Solitude by Grant Lawrence

In a nutshell

More than a decade ago, Canadian broadcaster Grant Lawrence wrote Adventures in Solitude, a collection of stories from his family’s cabin in British Columbia’s remote Desolation Sound. He spent his childhood summers there, among the deep Pacific fjords and local characters like The Cougar Lady and Russel the Hermit. Now a husband and father, Lawrence returns with a second book, digging deeper into the stories and myths of this rugged part of the coast, and reflecting on what the cabin means to him today.

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This book in three words:

Family, quiet, memories.

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Setting the Tone

Wakin’ on a Pretty Day by Kurt Vile, here

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Why I was drawn to this book

Ten years ago I read Adventures in Solitude, and it made a real impression on me. That book, along with The Golden Spruce, were some of the books that made me so keen to move to British Columbia. This past spring, Grant Lawrence did a really great live reading of Return to Solitude in Squamish, along with some musical guests, and I had to pick up the book after hearing a few snippets that night.

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Three things I liked about Return to Solitude

1. Focus on sense of place

   The Lawrence’s cabin isn’t easy to reach. From Vancouver where they live, it’s a drive and two ferries up the Sunshine Coast. Once they reach the hamlet of Lund at the top of the Sunshine Coast, it’s a boat ride into Desolation Sound. Despite the multiple steps and hours in the car to get there, it’s a place that keeps pulling the Lawrence’s back. This connection to a place, both for its inherent beauty and roughness, as well as the memories made there, is a focal point of the book. In telling the stories of some of the truly unique characters who also have cabins in Desolation Sound, Lawrence shares what pulled them to this remote corner of British Columbia.

2. Chapters on Russel the Hermit

   Russel the Hermit is an unforgettable character who Lawrence first met as a child. While the family was unloading their boat on the shore near their cabin, a gaunt, bearded figure emerged from the woods. Lawrence’s dad described him as looking like a cross between Willie Nelson and Charles Manson. The man introduced himself as Russel, and explained his friend had bought a lot in the nearby cove and allowed him to pitch a tent on it. Russel was a mysterious and compelling figure in Lawrence’s childhood, living alone in a rudimentary structure in a desolate cove. As an adult, he learned more about Russel’s backstory, and presents him as a complicated figure. From chronicling Russel’s epic hike in the 1970s from Pemberton to the Sunshine Coast, to showing what old age looks for a hermit, we get a fascinating look into the life of someone who lived completely on their own terms.

   As a side note, when we went to the live reading of Return to Solitude, Lawrence had photos of Russel projected while he read about him. A very drunk audience member sitting beside Stephen, my boyfriend, elbowed him and said “hey! he looks just like you!” Luckily Stephen has a great sense of humour.

3. Mystery of the Spaghetti Bandit

   Near the end of the book, Lawrence creates suspense by unravelling the tale of an unknown person breaking into cabins in the Sound. Cabin owners would arrive to find their places in dissaray, clearly broken into. Members of The Coastal Guardian Watchmen reported a strange individual camping on a sacred burial site. One family caught a man siphoning gas from their boat during the night. A yellow kayak went missing, used as a getaway craft. This was one of my favourite parts of the book, the true story of an outlaw-like character roaming around the inlets and coves of Desolation Sound.

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If you like Return to Solitude, read this:

1. Adventures in Solitude by Grant Lawrence

2. The Curve of Time by M. Wylie Blanchet

3. Spit Delaney’s Island by Jack Hodgins

Part 2: Good Bread

Chocolate chip peanut butter banana bread

Why this bread for this book?

In the 20 (!) previous issues of Good Book/Good Bread, I always have something tying the book and the bread together. That’s the premise of this whole shebang. But not this week. This week I returned from a truly overwhelming work trip to Las Vegas (if you want to experience culture shock, try going from Revelstoke BC to a conference with 100,000 people in Vegas) and I just wanted banana bread. Comforting, low-key, banana bread. I wanted it to be closer to a cake, so I eschewed the various healthy versions I came across and went for a classic one, and then added some extra treat ingredients in. In short, there is no reason I chose this bread for this book, except that I wanted to eat it.

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Recipe

I used this recipe, except I doubled it so I could slice and freeze one loaf. I also added 1 1/2 cups of chocolate chips and 2/3 of a cup of natural peanut butter.

Looking forward…

Album I’m looking forward to listening to: Blue Rev by The Alvvays

Bread I’m looking forward to baking: mini challah rolls

Book I’m looking forward to reading: Flour Lab: An At-Home Guide to Baking with Freshly Milled Grains by Adam Leonti and Katie Parla