A bartender who discovers magic on a winter night, a pair of losers taking a baking class, and a middle-aged woman who goes on a wild limo ride with the ghost of John Diefenbaker. These are a few of the amazing array of characters who live in, or near, Sharon MacFarlane’s fictional village of Palliser, a community struggling to survive in an age of rural depopulation. Whether its a terrifying drive on a frozen river («Ice Road») or a cancelled trip («We Didn’t Go to Len’s This Summer»), each of...