Ballistics - Hardcover

Wilson, D. W.

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 140883376X ISBN 13: 9781408833766

Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing, 2013

Synopsis

It is summer and the Canadian Rockies are on fire.

Fleeing the fallout of a relationship gone wrong, Alan West returns to his hometown. There, his grandfather, Cecil, suffers a heart attack and gives him one last task: he must track down the father he's never known, so that Cecil can make his peace.

And so Alan begins his search for the elusive Jack West, a man who skipped town decades earlier. The quest will lead him to Archer, an old American soldier who went AWOL into Canada at the apex of the Vietnam War. Together, at the behest of a dying man, they set off on a reckless journey through the burning mountains.

What they find will change their lives forever.

About this title

About the Author

D. W. Wilson was born and raised in the small towns of the Kootenay Valley, British Columbia. His stories have won the BBC National Short Story Award, been shortlisted for the CBC Short Story Prize, and been nominated for three Canadian National Magazine Awards. A story collection, Once You Break a Knuckle, was longlisted for the Frank O’Connor International Short Story Award and a finalist for the Ethel Wilson Fiction Prize and the Dylan Thomas Prize. Wilson lives in London.

From Booklist

This first novel by Canadian Wilson is set in a lushly described western Canada. In the 1960s, the area attracted American visitors, exiles, and fugitives, one of whom, AWOL army veteran Archer Cole, is a central figure in this mostly gripping if somewhat overwritten story. Unwilling to face another tour of duty in Vietnam, Archer, along with his 14-year-old daughter, Linnea, has crossed the border. In isolated British Columbia, they meet the cantankerous Cecil West and his then-adolescent son, Jack. In narratives alternating in time and told by Archer and Jack’s son, Alan, later grown and returned home from a stalled academic career, we learn, when Cecil sends Alan to find his dad, who left when Alan was a year old, the intricate circumstances surrounding that departure. Further complicated by a forest fire (fire plays a major role in this novel), the action heads toward an inevitable crisis. Though not unexpected, the ensuing action is forcefully related. Readers, who may be reminded of Russell Banks or the Ken Kesey of Sometimes a Great Notion, will find this a muscular, often violent, and dramatic story. --Mark Levine

About this edition

• Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
• Publication date: 2013
• ISBN 10: 140883376X
• ISBN 13: 9781408833766
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 400