>From the same geographical area that has produced Sandra Birdsell and Armin Wiebe, David Elias, author of two acclaimed story collections, Places of Grace, and Crossing the Line, gives us a humorous and profound look at a Sunday afternoon in the small southern Manitoba Mennonite Community of Neustadt. It is the time of the Cuban Missile Crisis, and just across the American border the US Military is burying Minuteman Missiles in preparation for a possible Armageddon. What precipitates the action is the return of a stranger, a gorgeous blonde in a yellow convertible with california plates. She is Katie Klassen, a local girl who has become a hollywood star, and has been drawn back to Manitoba by forces she doesn't understand. Katie was once destined to be Abe Wiebe's wife, perhaps she still is meant to be, but Abe took her desertion to Hollywood very hard. As Katie crosses the border back to Canada, a lightning storm develops, a threat perhaps as great as that represented by the missiles. Elias is dealing with major themes here-the destruction of the species, the apprehension which we suffer in the presence of military might. But what Elias tells us is that despite the possibility of imminent apocalypse, the urge to procreate supersedes all, and on this Sunday afternoon, the community, and even its most unlikely members, succumb to primal urges in response to the threat of annihilation. The scenes that follow are both heart-warming and heart-wrenching, with just a touch of the surreal-learned, I suspect, from the master Robert Kroetsch. Sweet, humorous, profound and scary. A marvelous debut.