First published 2006
Sandy Grey wants to fight in World War II, but his fundamentalist preacher father blocks his enlistment, convinced the world approaches its final days. Sandy's frustration boils over into violence when he attacks his father with a tire iron. The assault lands him in a British Columbia asylum for the criminally insane, where he must navigate a fractured world of patients and staff during wartime. Confined among society's outcasts, Sandy struggles to preserve his sanity and humanity while the war rages beyond the asylum walls. His survival depends on holding onto hope and the possibility of love in a place designed to strip away both. Through Sandy's eyes, the boundaries blur between the madness inside the institution and the greater insanity of a world at war. Orange Prize shortlisted author Marilyn Bowering creates a story where maintaining one's humanity becomes an act of resistance against forces that would reduce people to their basest instincts.
Genres: literary-fiction, historical-fiction, 20th-century, adult-fiction, psychological-thriller
Vibes: intimate, suspenseful, thought-provoking
Tropes: fish-out-of-water, maintaining-humanity
Setting: British Columbia
Period: World War II
304 pages · Paperback · Penguin Canada
Content warnings: mental-illness, violence