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Brother Frank's Gospel Hour: And other stories
Stated first edition. True, First Canadian Edition. A fine copy in a fine dust jacket.
Hardcover
First published January 1, 1995
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About the author
W.P. Kinsella
57 books235 followersWilliam Patrick Kinsella, OC, OBC was a Canadian novelist and short story writer. His work has often concerned baseball and Canada's First Nations and other Canadian issues.
William Patrick Kinsella was born to John Matthew Kinsella and Olive Kinsella in Edmonton, Alberta. Kinsella was raised until he was 10 years-old at a homestead near Darwell, Alberta, 60 km west of the city, home-schooled by his mother and taking correspondence courses. "I'm one of these people who woke up at age five knowing how to read and write," he says. When he was ten, the family moved to Edmonton.
As an adult, he held a variety of jobs in Edmonton, including as a clerk for the Government of Alberta and managing a credit bureau. In 1967, he moved to Victoria, British Columbia, running a pizza restaurant called Caesar's Italian Village and driving a taxi.
Though he had been writing since he was a child (winning a YMCA contest at age 14), he began taking writing courses at the University of Victoria in 1970, receiving his Bachelor of Arts in Creative Writing there in 1974. He travelled down to Iowa and earned a Master of Fine Arts in English degree through the Iowa Writers' Workshop at the University of Iowa in 1978. In 1991, he was presented with an honorary Doctor of Literature degree from the University of Victoria.
Kinsella's most famous work is Shoeless Joe, upon which the movie Field of Dreams was based. A short story by Kinsella, Lieberman in Love, was the basis for a short film that won the Academy Award for Live Action Short Film – the Oscar win came as a surprise to the author, who, watching the award telecast from home, had no idea the film had been made and released. He had not been listed in the film's credits, and was not acknowledged by director Christine Lahti in her acceptance speech – a full-page advertisement was later placed in Variety apologizing to Kinsella for the error. Kinsella's eight books of short stories about life on a First Nations reserve were the basis for the movie Dance Me Outside and CBC television series The Rez, both of which Kinsella considers very poor quality. The collection Fencepost Chronicles won the Stephen Leacock Award for Humour in 1987.
Before becoming a professional author, he was a professor of English at the University of Calgary in Alberta. Kinsella suffered a car accident in 1997 which resulted in a long hiatus in his fiction-writing career until the publication of the novel, Butterfly Winter. He is a noted tournament Scrabble player, becoming more involved with the game after being disillusioned by the 1994 Major League Baseball strike. Near the end of his life he lived in Yale, British Columbia with his fourth wife, Barbara (d. 2012), and occasionally wrote articles for various newspapers.
In the year 1993, he was made an Officer of the Order of Canada. In 2005, he was awarded the Order of British Columbia.
W.P. Kinsella elected to die on September 16, 2016 with the assistance of a physician.
William Patrick Kinsella was born to John Matthew Kinsella and Olive Kinsella in Edmonton, Alberta. Kinsella was raised until he was 10 years-old at a homestead near Darwell, Alberta, 60 km west of the city, home-schooled by his mother and taking correspondence courses. "I'm one of these people who woke up at age five knowing how to read and write," he says. When he was ten, the family moved to Edmonton.
As an adult, he held a variety of jobs in Edmonton, including as a clerk for the Government of Alberta and managing a credit bureau. In 1967, he moved to Victoria, British Columbia, running a pizza restaurant called Caesar's Italian Village and driving a taxi.
Though he had been writing since he was a child (winning a YMCA contest at age 14), he began taking writing courses at the University of Victoria in 1970, receiving his Bachelor of Arts in Creative Writing there in 1974. He travelled down to Iowa and earned a Master of Fine Arts in English degree through the Iowa Writers' Workshop at the University of Iowa in 1978. In 1991, he was presented with an honorary Doctor of Literature degree from the University of Victoria.
Kinsella's most famous work is Shoeless Joe, upon which the movie Field of Dreams was based. A short story by Kinsella, Lieberman in Love, was the basis for a short film that won the Academy Award for Live Action Short Film – the Oscar win came as a surprise to the author, who, watching the award telecast from home, had no idea the film had been made and released. He had not been listed in the film's credits, and was not acknowledged by director Christine Lahti in her acceptance speech – a full-page advertisement was later placed in Variety apologizing to Kinsella for the error. Kinsella's eight books of short stories about life on a First Nations reserve were the basis for the movie Dance Me Outside and CBC television series The Rez, both of which Kinsella considers very poor quality. The collection Fencepost Chronicles won the Stephen Leacock Award for Humour in 1987.
Before becoming a professional author, he was a professor of English at the University of Calgary in Alberta. Kinsella suffered a car accident in 1997 which resulted in a long hiatus in his fiction-writing career until the publication of the novel, Butterfly Winter. He is a noted tournament Scrabble player, becoming more involved with the game after being disillusioned by the 1994 Major League Baseball strike. Near the end of his life he lived in Yale, British Columbia with his fourth wife, Barbara (d. 2012), and occasionally wrote articles for various newspapers.
In the year 1993, he was made an Officer of the Order of Canada. In 2005, he was awarded the Order of British Columbia.
W.P. Kinsella elected to die on September 16, 2016 with the assistance of a physician.
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Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews
August 19, 2025
W.P. Kinsella returns us once again to the Ermineskin Reserve, Alberta, with Brother Frank’s Gospel Hour. Guided by the wry, watchful voice of Silas Ermineskin, these tales swing between sorrow and laughter, the way prairie skies can shift in a heartbeat from storm-dark to wide-open blue. Kinsella’s gift is in laying bare the absurdities of life without stripping it of dignity, and in Frank Fencepost he’s created a trickster-saint whose schemes are as harebrained as they are oddly redemptive. This collection is every bit the equal of The Moccasin Telegraph, maybe finer still.
Bull
Silas and Frank hire on to mind a herd of expensive cattle, and from the first page you know it won’t end well. Kinsella delights in showing how quickly the best-laid plans on the Reserve unravel into comic disaster.
Miracle on Manitoba Street
Frank takes up his hammer, screwdriver, and a rusted refrigerator to conjure a “miracle.” Soon he’s charging admission like a prairie carnival barker, until an old, near-sighted Indian granny shows up who just might outfox him.
The Elevator
A quieter, sadder tale: Silas dismantles an old silo in a ghost town and meets Simon, an Indian who has kept up the abandoned drive-in theater as if the white folks might return with movies any night. Loneliness and hope ride together in this one, like tumbleweed through a ghost town.
Ice Man
Jason Twelve Trees, age eleven, dreams of becoming a chef, against the grain of his father’s notions of manhood. Inspired by Delores Ermineskin’s defiance in chasing a place on the boys’ baseball team, he discovers a talent that not only wins the town’s heart but softens his father’s. A story as sweet and satisfying as bread just pulled from the oven.
Turbulence
Silas takes a teaching job in Grand Prairie, which means enduring a weekly flight. He’s not afraid of flying, he says, just the crashing. What unfolds is a meditation on fear, survival, and what makes life worth holding on to.
Saskatoon Search
A riotous adventure: Silas, Frank, and Mad Etta chase after mythical saskatoon berries in Chilcotin, only to cross paths with locals who think they’re tough guys. They haven’t reckoned with Frank Fencepost. This one will have you laughing till the tears sting.
The Rain Birds
Corporate farms drain the land of water and hope, leaving small farmers gasping. Silas and friends try to fight back, while Frank—ever the saboteur—turns up with a truckload of cucumbers. Chaos, as always, follows.
George the Cat
Rita Makes-room-for-them’s spirit animal appears not as an eagle or wolf, but as a ragged barn cat with the gift of speech. What sounds absurd becomes delightful in Kinsella’s hands, a surreal little gem of humor and heart.
Conflicting Statements
A man lies shot, and three witnesses each tell a different tale. Constable Greer struggles for truth in a fog of contradictions. For me, this one fell flat, more puzzle than story.
Dream Catcher
What begins in darkness—an attempted assault on Delores—becomes a haunting, thought-provoking piece about survival, the strength of kin, and the hidden freight of dreams.
Brother Frank’s Gospel Hour
The title story is pure Frank Fencepost: he and his crew break into the new radio station, launching a midnight broadcast stitched together from borrowed religion, good humor, and Frank’s peculiar charisma. What begins as a hustle becomes something larger, lifting the spirits of a whole community. If the ending feels abrupt, the ride getting there is worth it—Frank at his most inspired, Silas at his most observant, and Kinsella at his best.
This book, like Kinsella’s other collections, is laughter tinged with ache, magic pressed against the grit of reservation life. Kinsella shows us people who stumble, who scheme, who dream—and who, against all odds, keep their hearts intact.
Bull
Silas and Frank hire on to mind a herd of expensive cattle, and from the first page you know it won’t end well. Kinsella delights in showing how quickly the best-laid plans on the Reserve unravel into comic disaster.
Miracle on Manitoba Street
Frank takes up his hammer, screwdriver, and a rusted refrigerator to conjure a “miracle.” Soon he’s charging admission like a prairie carnival barker, until an old, near-sighted Indian granny shows up who just might outfox him.
The Elevator
A quieter, sadder tale: Silas dismantles an old silo in a ghost town and meets Simon, an Indian who has kept up the abandoned drive-in theater as if the white folks might return with movies any night. Loneliness and hope ride together in this one, like tumbleweed through a ghost town.
Ice Man
Jason Twelve Trees, age eleven, dreams of becoming a chef, against the grain of his father’s notions of manhood. Inspired by Delores Ermineskin’s defiance in chasing a place on the boys’ baseball team, he discovers a talent that not only wins the town’s heart but softens his father’s. A story as sweet and satisfying as bread just pulled from the oven.
Turbulence
Silas takes a teaching job in Grand Prairie, which means enduring a weekly flight. He’s not afraid of flying, he says, just the crashing. What unfolds is a meditation on fear, survival, and what makes life worth holding on to.
Saskatoon Search
A riotous adventure: Silas, Frank, and Mad Etta chase after mythical saskatoon berries in Chilcotin, only to cross paths with locals who think they’re tough guys. They haven’t reckoned with Frank Fencepost. This one will have you laughing till the tears sting.
The Rain Birds
Corporate farms drain the land of water and hope, leaving small farmers gasping. Silas and friends try to fight back, while Frank—ever the saboteur—turns up with a truckload of cucumbers. Chaos, as always, follows.
George the Cat
Rita Makes-room-for-them’s spirit animal appears not as an eagle or wolf, but as a ragged barn cat with the gift of speech. What sounds absurd becomes delightful in Kinsella’s hands, a surreal little gem of humor and heart.
Conflicting Statements
A man lies shot, and three witnesses each tell a different tale. Constable Greer struggles for truth in a fog of contradictions. For me, this one fell flat, more puzzle than story.
Dream Catcher
What begins in darkness—an attempted assault on Delores—becomes a haunting, thought-provoking piece about survival, the strength of kin, and the hidden freight of dreams.
Brother Frank’s Gospel Hour
The title story is pure Frank Fencepost: he and his crew break into the new radio station, launching a midnight broadcast stitched together from borrowed religion, good humor, and Frank’s peculiar charisma. What begins as a hustle becomes something larger, lifting the spirits of a whole community. If the ending feels abrupt, the ride getting there is worth it—Frank at his most inspired, Silas at his most observant, and Kinsella at his best.
This book, like Kinsella’s other collections, is laughter tinged with ache, magic pressed against the grit of reservation life. Kinsella shows us people who stumble, who scheme, who dream—and who, against all odds, keep their hearts intact.
July 20, 2022
One could easily dismiss Kinsella for his sometimes stereotypical presentation of First Peoples in many of his short stories, and I understand the criticisms of cultural appropriation, but I also think writers can create and mold stories from whatever they wish, it being up to the readers to judge. I have found many, many of his stories delights, especially the ones that make me laugh. Personally, and this is just my opinion, I think he respected Native American culture and yet found the humor in humanity as well. I liked most of these eleven short stories. I like his trickster/Lothario Frank Fencepost and his more grounded friend Silas Ermineskin. I love when they trick authority and use white attitudes against those that hold them. Foremost for me, is that I love the humor.
January 6, 2025
He’s a great writer … get over it.
July 3, 2017
Some of the stories are cute and charming -- I really enjoyed Ice Man, in particular, or the one about the Virgin Mary in the doorway -- others are weird or incomprehensible. One of the stories is a take on Rashomon, but it doesn't really add anything interesting to the original tale, and ends up being a bit of a plod. Part of me thinks I may have gotten more insight had I read any of the prequels (in that there's often this expectation that the reader knows something about each one of the narrator Silas's friends before they're introduced in a particular story), but seeing as all the stories are all standalone, I don't know if it would've mattered. I also found Silas's "voice" inconsistent -- Mr. Kinsella kept switching between good grammar and dialect with him, and initially he seemed like a bit of a rube, but other times he stresses he's a good writer and he seemed smarter than his peers, so it was hard to get a handle on his character as anything more than a functional observer. That being said, this is a quick, easy read, and the stories are fairly short, so it's ideal if you're the type of reader who only has ten minutes here or there to absorb anything.
March 21, 2010
Very funny bite size stories to enjoy on the road. I found myself habitually picking this book up whenever I see it on my table desk everyday for the past week. The stories aren't strenuous reads and you can enjoy them in small portions. They are heartwarming stories and Kinsella's writing makes reading these stories feel unearthly natural. All the stories were good but I'd have to say Conflicting Statements was probably my favorite and the one with the talking cat was my least favorite, it was a bit too "magical fantasy land" for me :\
One thing I didn't like about the story was the lack of reoccurring characters. Besides the lovely Mad Etta, Officer Greer, and Frank you won't really get to see the funny fictional characters that Kinsella cobbles in his stories make a second comeback. It's a shame considering many of his characters are so well established that to loose them before you get to really know them is quite a loss.
One thing I didn't like about the story was the lack of reoccurring characters. Besides the lovely Mad Etta, Officer Greer, and Frank you won't really get to see the funny fictional characters that Kinsella cobbles in his stories make a second comeback. It's a shame considering many of his characters are so well established that to loose them before you get to really know them is quite a loss.
August 31, 2009
Silas Ermineskin and Frank Fencepost are at it again; getting in and out of trouble; keeping us laughing the whole time.
Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews