Happy book birthday to Kathleen Winter’s LOST IN SEPTEMBER, this thrilling new novel just published with Alfred A. Knopf Canada!
This brilliant high-concept novel reimagines an eleven-day period in the life of General James Wolfe (1727-1759), an iconic figure in the military history of Canada. Legend portrays him as fearless and determined, but his voluminous personal correspondence (some of which is housed at Toronto’s Thomas Fisher Rare Book Library) reveals a lifelong struggle with melancholy and trauma.
Wolfe began his military career at the age of 15. By 25, after a decade of hard soldiering, he begged, and was awarded, a month of study leave in Paris. But before he could embark, Britain adopted Europe’s Gregorian calendar, and the entire country had to adjust its dates: September 2, 1752 was followed by September 14, and Wolfe lost eleven days of his precious sabbatical.
In LOST IN SEPTEMBER, Wolfe is reimagined as Jimmy, a PTSD-afflicted veteran wandering the streets of contemporary Montreal, determined to reclaim those lost days and to fathom what became of his youth—and of the British North America for whose gain he’d abandoned all hope of personal happiness. His search dislodges unsettling questions about the price war exacts from soldiers of all empires, past and present. In this poetic and imaginative work, Winter skillfully interweaves the factual past with an imagined present, while bridging more than 300-years of time.
Kathleen Winter’s previous novel Annabel was published in 15 countries and is in development as a film. It was a finalist for the Scotiabank Giller, Governor General’s Award, Writers’ Trust and Orange (U.K.) prizes, was a Globe and Mail “Best Book” and a New York Times “Notable,” and was a #1 bestselling Canada Reads selection. Previous to that debut, Kathleen penned the short story collections, boYs and has subsequently published a second collection, The Freedom in American Songs, and an award-nominated travel memoir, Boundless: Tracing Land and Dream in a New Northwest Passage.
Pre-publication Praise:
– A CBC Books selection for “Fall 2017: books you must read this season”
– A Globe and Mail “Most Anticipated” book for the rest of 2017
– Chosen by Canadian librarians as one of their “Favourite Upcoming September Books” (Quill and Quire)
– A Chatelaine “Best Fall Reads” book
– Deemed a highly-anticipated “Sizzling Stories” by the Winnipeg Free Press