The Kite

W.O. Mitchell's critically acclaimed novel, The Kite, is a humorous yet touching story of a journalist's worst nightmare. Set in the Prairie backwater of Shelby, Alberta, seasoned reporter and minor television celebrity David Lang arrives to write a magazine feature on the town's oldest living citizen, the 111-year-old curmudgeon Daddy Sherry.

Still recovering from the disappointments of a fatherless childhood, the uptight David just wants to file his story as quickly as possible and hightail it back to Toronto. But he hasn't reckoned on the cantankerous cunning of Daddy Sherry. As David chases his recalcitrant subject all over town, he begins to understand the meaning of life and finds love and happiness for the first time.

This new edition of The Kite coincided with the publication of a newly discovered and never-before-published edition of the novel in audio format, featuring Mitchell's own reading. It also introduces a whole new generation of readers to the rampaging Daddy Sherry, a holy terror whom Margaret Laurence considered to be Mitchell's "best and most complete character."

W.O. Mitchell is one of the most recognized Canadian authors of the last century. He was born in Weyburn, Saskatchewan in 1914, and during a varied career he was everything from a Depression hobo to the fiction editor of Maclean's. His best-loved book, Who Has Seen the Wind (1947) is hailed as the quintessential Canadian coming-of-age novel. Other works include Jake and the Kid (1961), The Kite (1962), The Vanishing Point (1973), How I Spent My Summer Holidays (1981), Since Daisy Creek (1984), Ladybug, Ladybug (1988), According to Jake and the Kid (1989), Roses are Difficult Here (1990), For Ark's Sake (1992), An Evening with W.O. Mitchell (1997) and the play The Black Bonspiel of Wullie MacCrimmon (1993). He won the Leacock Medal for Humour for Jake and the Kid and again for According to Jake and the Kid. Mitchell was made an officer in the Order of Canada in 1973 and has been the subject of an NFB documentary entitled W.O. Mitchell: A Novelist in Hiding.