[3] Her novel and stories have also won critical acclaim for their vivid characters, spare writing and tragic themes that nevertheless convey humour and hope.

From 1988 to 1991, she studied creative writing at the University of Alaska Fairbanks, with among others, Frank Soos and Peggy Shumaker, earning a Master of Fine Arts degree.

She added that the program provided her with "a toolbox of skills and techniques" while giving her a chance to read a wide variety of American writers.

"One of the most refreshing aspects of this collection is that so many of the 13 stories in Saltwater Trees rise out of the insanities, the batterings and the drudgeries of real life to end on notes of hope," Riskin wrote.

In 1993, J. Jill Robinson published Lovely In Her Bones, a collection of 11 stories including "Finding Linette," co-winner of Event magazine's 1992 prize for creative nonfiction.

Calgary journalist and author Ken McGoogan, who interviewed Robinson about the new book, described "Finding Linette" as a "technically sophisticated" story that "intercuts the straight-ahead tale of a family's Christmas gathering with memories—and conflicting versions—of the long-ago death of a child."

The Globe and Mail critic John Doyle wrote that the stories were ones of "quiet self absorption" adding: "Fortunately, they are written in a clear, lucid prose and often attain a rhythm that saves them from static solipsism."

Almost, but not quite, because these stories depend for their effects on insights we might not achieve without spending a good long time inside a character's head.

"[15] J. Jill Robinson moved from Calgary to Saskatoon in 1993[10] to join the writer, Steven Ross Smith whom she would later marry.

[1] During her years in Saskatchewan, she also taught creative writing at St. Peter's College in Muenster as well as at the First Nations University of Canada.

The stories are edgy as befits the dark themes that drive them, but there is hope too, and more than one rueful laugh at those delightful foibles that mark us all as human.

"Robinson's stories are dramatic and heart wrenching, but, impressively, there's nothing heavy-handed or unbelievable in her delivery," the review added.

"[19] I am generally a fan of sparely written prose; a character's suffering can be laid so bare the reader winces because she can't shy away.

"When you're happy and joyful, you don't need so much to pick up a pen to try to fathom or understand life...If a story of mine helps somebody see that there's another way through a really difficult, or seemingly impossible situation, I feel good," she added.

"[21] Residual Desire includes "Deja Vu" a story commissioned by CBC Radio on the recommendation of Guy Vanderhaeghe, winner of two Governor General's Literary Awards.

"It's about a woman who's on her way to the Coast stops in Calgary and on a whim, decides to visit her ex-husband," Robinson told a journalist.

The novel is divided into three sections named after the unlucky Opal, her emotionally cold daughter Pearl and her troubled granddaughter Vivien.

The novel ends as Vivien struggles to break free from her family's legacy of anger so that her own daughter can escape its destructive cycle.

"[2] Robinson says she struggled with the novel for 10 years and found it frustrating trying to find "a sense of structure, or narrative thrust, to make it work."

A reviewer for The Globe and Mail observed: "Countless novels have been written about family dysfunction, but few so precisely capture verbal abuse and its long-lasting psychological effects...Character and the overt ways in which ridicule and mistreatment shape the psyche are where Robinson overwhelmingly succeeds.

"[25] TheToronto Star, however, called the novel "relentlessly depressing" adding that Robinson "provides nothing uplifting or enlightening for her readers.

"[26] A reviewer for the Winnipeg Free Press described More in Anger as a "compassionate" book "sombre yet gripping" adding that even though readers know from the beginning things won't turn out well, they "remain steadfastly horrified, fascinated and curious, all at the same time.

[28] On the other hand, an online reviewer wrote that the strength of the novel lay in its "three-dimensional" characters adding that "Robinson writes about families and the love that both binds them together and tears them apart with a psychological insight that can make you cringe with recognition.

"[2] Robinson once explained that her artistic inspiration came from the American writer William Faulkner who believed that matters of the heart are the only things worth writing about.