“Maggie’s Day” Author: John Britt

“Maggie’s Day”
Author: John Britt, Cover Design: Jan Porter
Publisher: Moose Hide Books, Sault Sainte Marie, Ontario, Canada, www.mooshidebooks.com, mooseenterprises@aibn.com, www.chapters.indigo.ca
ISBN: 978-1-894650-59-5

Author John Britt latest novel “Maggie’s Day” is a powerful page turner!

      “Maggie’s Day” is a socially innovative and insightful perspective of the timeless plight of poverty, man’s social support structures and of man’s continuing efforts to eradicate it. The story is filled with insights on how people find themselves in object poverty presented in a way that we can all relate to in some capacity. It is an intensely personal journey of the soul.
      The story is one defining day in the life of Maggie Campbell, where external and internal pressures demand change in order for her and her family to survive. She is a rural wife and mother of three children from a middle class family who has now found themselves in object poverty and marital discord. Maggie wakes up sick but must rise to the task of coping with a social services worker who advises her that yet again, that their monthly cheque will be reduced due to her husband’s lack of participation in the work program and that their house will now have a lien on it. She must address their empty cupboards, her husband’s state of inaction, her children’s food and clothing needs and a winter storm. Maggie ventures out into the storm in a broken down car, a near empty gas tank and with her two young daughters to seek out help with no money in hand. She analysis’s her situation, her marriage, her future and searches her soul in vain for a way out, for hope.
      The story gives a first hand account of the realities of the poverty experience within an affluent country. There is the ever present fear of unwanted intervention, such as the Children’s Aid Society and their reputation of apprehending of children of the poor. Change the name and location perhaps, but this story is taking place in Canada, and globally, within prided welfare systems that are intricately woven with demands and rules that ultimately fall unacceptably short in offering a hand ‘up’.
      Mother Theresa once said “…the poorest of the poor and those closest to death are the closest to God, if we have the eyes to see it and the ears to hear it”.
      John Britt has a gift of bringing us into the world of un-sung heroes, hidden journeys and sub-cultures in a way that moves the reader along their own personal soul journey.

Reviewed by; Jan Porter