The Western Light
Susan Swan’s newest classic, The Western Light, is a prequel to The Wives of Bath. The story pulls us into the life of young Mouse Bradford, torn between love for her father and the charismatic asylum inmate John Pilkie, an ex Red Wings hockey player, serving a life sentence for the murder of his wife and baby girl.
Set in Madoc’s Landing, a fictional Ontario town on Georgian Bay, The Western Light “weaves in details of the history of the Ontario oil boomtown Petrolia, hockey mania, bootlegging taxi drivers, and debates over psychiatry and universal health care. [Swan’s] poetic descriptions of Ontario’s harsh winter weather and adept use of colloquial speech are particularly vivid, and help bring the world of the novel to vibrant life.” — Sarah Greene, Quill & Quire, October 2012
“[A] vivid evocation of life in the 50s and its essential signifiers: the clothes, the hair, the telephone party lines and the all-out hate-on between fans of the Montreal Canadiens and the Toronto Maple Leafs.” — Susan G. Cole, NOW Magazine, August 23, 2012
Publisher: Cormoront Books
Shortlisted, 2013 OLA Evergreen Award