Author Q&A: Susan Sanford Blades’s New Book Casts an Eye to 1990s Edmonton

Susan Sanford Blades’s debut novel, Fake it So Real (the title is taken from a line from Hole’s “Doll Parts,” a song Courtney Love wrote about the insecurities of being in love with mega anti-rock star Kurt Cobain) is a story that spans decades. It begins in Victoria, B.C. centred on a single mom and her two daughters. The three of them have anything but a traditional family relationship, and the spectre of their missing father, who once sang in a punk band called Dorothy’s Rainbow, is hard to shake. 

Part of the book is set in Edmonton during the mid-1990s. Sanford Blades grew up in Edmonton, and even worked at West Edmonton Mall, before moving to Victoria in 2005. For any of us who remember Edmonton in the 1990s, there’s plenty in the novel to make you nostalgic for a Funky Pickle pizza slice after a night of dancing at Rebar.

ED: Your descriptions of Edmonton in the 1990s, especially Whyte Avenue, may have some readers in this city feeling nostalgic …

SSB: That was my picture of Edmonton. I actually came back two summers ago, the summer before the pandemic. Obviously, it’s changed a lot, but, the things that were the same, it was like, “aw, yeah!” The Black Dog is still there! (Note: Blackbyrd Myoozik makes an appearance in the book.) I wanted to set those chapters in Edmonton because I know it so well. That’s the Edmonton I lived in, that I knew. It’s nostalgic not only for Edmonton, but for my youth, I guess. It’s where I came of age. I have a lot of strong attachments to the Edmonton of the ‘90s.

ED: Sara (one of the daughters in the book) gets off the Greyhound in Edmonton, and she sees it as simply a pit stop. She ends up being rooted in a city she had never planned to call home. Do you think that’s an example of how many of us come to Edmonton? That we saw it first as a temporary home, a place to establish ourselves, but then come to call it our permanent home? Or am I reading too much into it?

SSB: This sounds awful, honestly, I love Edmonton, but growing up I always thought of it as a place that people leave, not a place people come to. That was my experience growing up, people I knew said, “Of course I’m not going to stay here forever.” But, probably, everyone thinks that about their hometown. But maybe it is a place where people go, they get jobs there, think they’re going to be there for a few years and then they fall in love with it.