Cara Hedley scores with Twenty Miles
By Cara Hedley
Reviewed by Sharon Chisvin
CARA Hedley knows hockey.
She knows the ice and the boards. She knows the thrill of the game. She knows what it's like to leave home and move away to play the game. She knows the tension of trying out for a new team, and she knows how it feels to be the new kid on that team.
She also knows how to write!
Hedley effortlessly exhibits all of this know-how in her debut novel, a work of literary fiction that is surprisingly touching, honest, engaging and unusual -- both in terms of its subject matter and perspective.
Twenty Miles , after all, revolves around the world of competitive women's hockey and intercollegiate athletics.
The Winnipeg-raised Hedley, currently a PhD student in English at the University of Alberta, suited up with the University of Manitoba Bisons women's hockey team in the late 1990s. No doubt much of this novel was inspired by her own experiences playing Canada's favourite pastime.
Hedley's protagonist is Iz Norris, a young woman from Kenora recruited to play hockey for the fictional Winnipeg University Scarlets.
Iz was raised by her grandmother, who not so subtlety encouraged her to carry on the legacy of her father, Kristjan, a homegrown hockey legend who died before Iz was born.
Although small in stature, Iz is a talented athlete who does her best to fill her father's skates. Growing up, she always managed to hold her own playing with and against boys' teams. Playing among women, she discovers, is a different experience.
The Scarlets are an assortment of tough on the outside, intimidating, hard-drinking, fun-loving, often vulgar young women known by deliberately ambiguous nicknames such as Hal, Toad and Heezer.
For most of them hockey is a true passion, a second home, an arena in which to deflect the troubles in their lives. As Iz discovers, it isn't quite all that for her.
'A hockey game is the same old story told over and over again,' she comes to realize. 'Even if the score board doesn't give you what you want after the last seconds have fallen down over the players' helmets and the final horn has bounced off the ice, you'll still be okay. It's just a game. A safe pace for people to put their hope. The promise of trying again and again.'
Having come to this conclusion, several pertinent questions remain for Iz. Should she continue to play the game if she has lost her passion? Did she ever have the passion? Should she disappoint her grandmother? Should she live someone else's dream and keep shooting for that unwanted goal?
Hedley stickhandles her way around Iz's conundrum with beautiful agility, using deftly lyrical prose and insight to describe the rough and tumble of a hard-hitting game and the harsh realities of life.
In describing "the final lick of the Zamboni's slow tongue" and a goalie "puffing herself bigger like a spooked cat" she evokes lucid and precise imagery and an acute and appreciative eye for the smallest of details.
The result is an accomplished and thoughtful novel, a tender and unique story to be savoured equally by hockey fans, student athletes and those who simply appreciate very fine writing.
