Sand for Snow: A Caribbean-Canadian Chronicle

Robert Edison Sandiford moved from Canada to his parentsi native Barbados in 1996. He went for iwife and worki o his new bride was a Bajan, and he had landed an editoris position at the leading daily newspaper. Yet his journey eBack Homei also led to a series of insightful and often poignant meditations on relationships, island life, and the decline of his father, diagnosed with Alzheimeris disease twelve years earlier. iComing out of the Caribbean as these stories did, they could not have been written in any other time or place, i 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

iThis unpretentious, charming book reminds us of the power of observationoand of reflectionoclearly articulated. i

oHalifax Sunday Herald, Dec. 2004

ioThe 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 o albeit regardless of the fact that they have failed him o to Barbados] the country of his parents' birth, a country he knows only from visits and stories.i

oGroove, 2004

iRaised 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.i

oH. Nigel Thomas, Montreal Community Contact, 2004

iThis 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....i

oRicky Jordan

iIn 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.i oMcGill News, Summer 2004iSandifordis strength lies in provocative profiles.... i oMontreal Gazette, 2004iMigration 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. i oCaribbean Beat, Jul/Aug 2004