Ballistics
A Novel
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- $12.99
Publisher Description
It is summer and the Canadian Rockies are on fire. As the forests blaze, Alan West heads into their shadows, returning from university to his grandfather's home in the remote Kootenay Valley, wherethe man who raised him has suffered a heart attack. Confronting his own mortality, the tough and taciturn Cecil West has a dying request for his grandson: track down the father Alan has never known so that the old man can make peace with him.
And so Alan begins his search for the elusive Jack West, a man who skipped town before his son could walk and of whom his grandfather has always refused to speak. His quest will lead him to Archer, an old American soldier who decades ago went AWOL across the border into Canada. Archer has been carrying a heavy burden for many years, and through him Alan learns the stories of two broken families who came together, got too close, and then fell apart in tragic ways.
Ballistics is a remarkable first novel, about family ties and the wounds that can linger for generations when those relationships are betrayed.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
The rugged individualism and frontier spirit of the Canadian Rockies are fully on display in Wilson's impressive debut novel. In 1969, Archer Cole has already served two tours as a Marine in Vietnam when Uncle Sam taps him to return to the war, and the battle-weary veteran decides to flee his native Montana for Canada with his teenage daughter, Linnea, in tow. They make it as far as Invermere, a rural hamlet in British Columbia's Kootenay Valley, where they meet Cecil West, a welder by trade, and his young son, Jack. After the Wests take in Archer, he is smitten by the redheaded Nora Miller, Cecil's fianc e. As Archer and Nora begin a secret affair, Jack falls in love with Linnea. After she gives birth to their son, Alan, the two families fall apart. Twenty-nine years later, in 2003, Alan is home from university when his grandfather Cecil suffers a heart attack. Hoping to see his son one last time, Cecil tasks Alan with finding Jack, who's long been estranged from both his father and son. Wilson's muscular prose and gritty voice, which recall the late crime novelist James Crumley, bring to life Alan's fateful attempt to discover whether the old family hatreds and grudges can be overcome.
