The Englishman's Boy

The Englishman's Boy

Guy Vanderhaeghe

#1636 of 8,085 books · #269 in Historical Fiction

Shortlisted for the International Dublin Literary Award (1998) and the Giller Prize (1996).

This brilliant and compelling novel, set in the early days of the Canadian West, connects Hollywood in the 1920s with one of the bloodiest, most brutal events of the nineteenth-century Canadian West -- the Cypress Hills Massacre. Vanderhaeghe's rendering of the stark, dramatic beauty of the western landscape and of Hollywood in its most extravagant era -- with its visionaries, celebrities, and dreamers -- provides vivid background for scenes of action, adventure, and intrigue. Richly textured, evocative of time and place, this is an unforgettable novel about power, greed, and the pull of dreams that has at its centre the haunting story of a young drifter -- "the Englishman's boy."