Dr. Peter Sarsfield, CEO and medical officer of the Northwestern Health Unit, is awaiting the release of his second book, “Hollow Water,” sometime this month from Winnipeg’s Turnstone Press.
Following the successful publication of his first book, “Running with the Caribou,” Dr. Sarsfield again has compiled a collection of short stories that give readers a glimpse into his experiences as a travelling doctor and his Nova Scotia childhood.
While spending 25 years in Labrador and the Northwest Territories, and visiting the West Indies, Sweden, and Thailand, he has maintained a habit of keeping notes. And his first book was an edited publication of some of those notes.
This time around, he’s added a touch of fiction to his already colourful glimpses of life.
“There is a mixture of fiction and non-fiction,” said Dr. Sarsfield. “I have thought for most of my life that the distinctions between fiction and non-fiction are vague.
“My experiences are coloured by my perception,” he explained. “Fiction is also pictured through our experiences, they’re both coloured.”
By dabbling in fiction in this book, Dr. Sarsfield said he is, to a certain extent, searching for the truth.
He has written all his life as a means of relaxing and forgetting about the physical world surrounding him, while composing snapshots of that world and singling out significant collaborations of people, sights, and sounds.
Dr. Sarsfield compares the way writing captures his interest to the comments of a hockey player asked about the pressure of playing in front of large crowds and TV cameras.
“He said, ‘I never had trouble with that. When I’m on the ice, I forget about everything but the game.’ It’s the same when I’m writing,” he reasoned.
Two editions–about 3,000 copies–of Dr. Sarsfield’s first collection of short stories was published.
Dr. Sarsfield has been writing since he was a teenager and currently writes a regular column for the Kenora Enterprise. He wondered out loud what would have happened if he’d become a writer instead of a doctor to begin with, and showed hesitant excitement at the suggestion of a novel.
“It’s like asking someone who is very good at swimming across their swimming pool in the back yard to swim across the Lake of the Woods,” he said.
In the meantime, the doctor’s short, insightful glimpses of human nature again will be available for his readers.
Fort Frances Times
Local News from Across the Rainy River District
