Proof Copy. 8vo. Pp. [vi], 715, [3]. Pictorial wraps.
Author's second novel. Winner of the 2004 Canadian Booksellers' Association Libris Award for Fiction Book of the Year. Nominated for the 2003 Giller Prize for Fiction and the 2004 Commonwealth Writers' Prize for Best Book (Canada and Caribbean Region).
Set in a sleepy air force base in the early '60s, a coming-of-age story, Cold War thriller, murder mystery, and morality play, as filtered through the imagination of nine-year-old Madeleine McCarthy. Based on the Steven Truscott case, the 14 year old Ontario boy wrongly convicted of murder and sentenced to hang in 1959. "Beautifully written and equally beautiful in its compassion, its wisdom, even in its anger and pain. Don't miss it." –Washington Post