Affectionately combining both the idyllic and ironic, Sunshine Sketches of a Little Town is a colourful, imaginative, and thoroughly entertaining portrait of small town Ontario. This is Stephen Leacock at his best.
Sunshine Sketches of a Little Town, which first appeared as a newspaper serial, chronicles life in the fictional community of Mariposa, modelled on Orillia, Ontario, where Stephen Leacock spent many summers. It's a brilliant satire about small towns, small-town people, and small-town occurrences.
Life in Mariposa is never dull or ordinary. It's a town full of eccentrics, where boats sent to rescue passengers from a sinking steamer have to be rescued themselves, where the leading citizen is a 280-pound illiterate saloonkeeper, and where a barber who stumbles into a fortune is heralded as a financial wizard.
Praise for Sunshine Sketches of a Little Town: "Leacock had a wonderful ear for dialogue and was superbly skilled in creating polished, self-contained scenes and in evoking character with a few sure strokes." -- Will Ferguson
Praise for Seth: "To read a book by Seth is to enter an oddly cozy, perfectly designed world where humor, nostalgia, and a gentle sadness pervade like the last autumnal rays of sunlight on a quiet afternoon." -- San Francisco Weekly