Sick Heart River

"Sick Heart River" is the fifth book in the Edward Leithen series. This is Buchan's last novel, about a man who is dying, and it must reflect Buchan's own efforts to come to terms with his looming demise.

"Sick Heart River" finds Leithen now in his late fifties facing a terminal diagnosis of turberculosis. Leithen has enjoyed a dazzling career as eminent barrister, member of Parliament, Cabinet minister, and attorney-general but with only months left to live, he leaves it all behind and takes up a whole new mission into the bleak arctic wilds of Canada. The friend of a friend, Francis Galliard, has gone missing in the North, and Leithen volunteers to find him and send him back, and so to die well, far away from the irking sympathy of his friends or the coddled atmosphere of the sick-room. But the North has some surprises in store for Leithen.