“A great read and believable story about motivating a whole community.

“An outspoken prairie town female welder mends the hearts, minds and the broken machinery of Shallow Rapids while welding out of this world art sculpture in her very down-to-earth shop.

The fusion of ideas and metal make the concept of fission power a reality in this book.”

Doug Rault, B.Sc.

Welding Examiner, QA/QC Inspector

Changing People's Lives

Analiese Drucker is a creative problem solver. A thinking-ahead young woman. When the electrical grid collapses during a prairie winter, she finds an elderly friend shivering and alone in a snowbound home.

Determined to secure the energy future of her friends, family, and neighbours, she proposes an audacious community plan to make the town an independent, electricity producer using carbon-free nuclear power.

“You showed us we have something worth fighting for,” the mayor tells Analiese.

A quick-witted strategist, Analiese deploys her scientific knowledge with quirky, humorous insights that challenge the traditional attitudes of provincial and corporate opponents.

“The smart, wry humour made me laugh aloud.

“I love this book; it's highly original in content and style, cleverly amusing, and filled with lively, engaging characters.

The love story is beautifully handled with nuances, and the smart, wry humour made me laugh aloud."

Troon Harrison

Editor, and multi-award winning author

Our Infinite Possibilites

Everybody knows everybody's business in Shallow Rapids, Alberta.

On Sundays, Analiese Drucker, 20, can be counted on to lead youth class, play piano and sing soprano. On workdays, she's in coveralls repairing broken farm implements at Drucker Welding.

Along Railway Street, Analiese displays her steel Shapes: the wind-twisting sculptures that perplex the town elders.

Behind her welding visor, Analiese considers other possibilities for her life, but keeps those thoughts to herself—until she is backed into a corner by the town's traditionalists.

Her decision made, she loads her pick-up with welding tools and heads down Sinners' Highway.

I'd forgotten where I discovered stories as a boy. I suspect university and employment backfilled the leak in my brain where those improbabilities seeped out.

Two years ago, age 70, a new idea trickled into my thoughts and I began writing the Shallow Rapids series. That inspiration almost dried up in a hospital. It took another year for me to coax it back to life.

I slow-realized how change had quietly ambushed me when, without rregret, I boxed up thirty years of novels, biographies, profiles, magazine articles and news stories.

Shallow Rapids, a slowdown on a passthrough highway, is the now where I'm living and finishing the third book about the unexpected Analiese Drucker, Journeyman Welder.

In Shallow Rapids Analiese's acceptance of the universe's lovely randomness inspires changes in communities and in people's lives.

In writing about Shallow Rapids, I live my stories. There's no other place I want to be.

"I borrowed that idea from Quantum Mechanics,” I tell her. “Think of your life as a wave of chance that contains all your possibilities. All the opportunities for things to happen to you, some probable, some improbable. It's up to you which ones you want to hold onto.”

Analiese Drucker, Journeyman Welder and Wayward Thinker    

Greville Carson is dying.

Former astrophysicist and quantum physicist transformed into renowned artist, Greville asks Analiese to accompany him on a farewell sketching tour of small towns. In June, they load a travel trailer with his art supplies and the Drucker Welding Dodge with shop tools and steel.

Without discussion, their art changes. Analiese’s Shapes begin to twist and turn and Greville’s simple sketches slowly reveal the beauty of everyday life.

Our Insignificant Differences

Along the way, well-wishers stop by their campsites to watch them work, and to discuss the random opportunities Analiese sees as possible endings to her friend’s life.

Analiese, pragmatically, hopes to be home by fall when her baby is due to arrive New to Earth. Greville, however, has an unforeseen possibility scheduled.

The friends angstless acceptance of whatever might come endears them to  visitors who recognize the value of accepting life's unpredictability.

As always, Analiese’s quirky ways reveal that what we have in common makes our differences insignificant.

SHALLOW RAPIDS

A Series by Tyler Trafford