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Women are very much a minority in various compendiums of the sainted—and curiously, those who are there almost never reflect the church-sanctioned role of a woman as wife and mother. In this collection, Alice Major imagines female voices speaking from the stories and legends of the past.

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Women posing as men. Virgins who defied their families and friends and ran off. Abbesses who founded new rules and orders, women of political and administrative ability. Women who could do magic – float in the air, read hearts at a distance. It is as though certain ideas about how women should live their lives had been escorted firmly out the front door of the church only to climb in again through the back window. 

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Some bones and a story is a series of dramatic monologues in various voices, from Saint Anne (Mother of the Virgin Mary) to Saint Scholastica (twin sister of St. Benedict).​

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Published by Wolsak and Wynn

ISBN 0-919897-74-6

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Experience a poem

Text Poem – The Saint’s Daughter – First Decade

Audio Poem  – Saint Martha

Recognition

This collection was shortlisted for the Pat Lowther Memorial Award (given annually for a book of poetry by a Canadian woman.) 

Reviews

>> Looking at this new volume alone, it is clear that her greatest talent lies in creating imagery that illuminates entire narrative sequences. Often the images are conjured with great economy, such as the one that punctuates this scene:

“Why do you not eat?” I asked.

. . . God told me

she murmured and the room ran with a current

carried on the sidelong slide of eyes.”

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The electric sibilants in that final line mimic the movement of an unspoken thought among the people in a room — and in so doing, conjure those people almost magically.

– Literary Review of Canada, Nov-Dec. 2001

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>> A master of both narrative technique and precise imagery, Major offers the reader a series of realistic word-portraits of women who, lacking other ways and means of expressing themselves, found expression in religious fervour.

– Canadian Bookseller, February, 2002

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>> The moment of vocation is captured with heartbreaking simplicity in “Saint Marina”: “It came as a voice that spoke my name/intimately, at my shoulder. My / name. The one my mother called me by.”

​– Books in Canada, September 2002.​ 

Some Bones and a Story is now out of print, but a pdf copy can be available by contacting Alice Major.​​​​​​​​