Out today from Leméac Éditeur is the French North American edition of Ian Weir’s THE DEATH AND LIFE OF STROTHER PURCELL, titled MORT ET VIE DE STROTHER PURCELL. Originally published in English by Goose Lane Editions, this novel was translated into French by Aurélie Laroche.
“Masterfully crafted storytelling, witty and pacy and scratchy with grit. When it comes to the ‘Canadian Western,’ Ian Weir thrills and heartbreaks in similar ways as Guy Vanderhaeghe, and if that all sounds like a good time, it is.” — Andrew Pyper
In 1876, the fabled lawman Strother Purcell disappears into a winter storm in the mountains of British Columbia, while hunting down his outlawed half-brother. Sixteen years later, the wreck of Purcell resurfaces – derelict, homeless and one-eyed – in a San Francisco jail cell. And a failed journalist named Barrington Weaver conceives a grand redemptive plan. He will write Purcell’s true-life story. All it requires is a final act…
What unfolds is an archetypal saga of obsession, lost love, treachery, and revenge, told in Ian Weir’s trademark funny, fast, wickedly intelligent style. A deadpan revisionist Western, refracted through a Southern Gothic revenge tragedy, THE DEATH AND LIFE OF STROTHER PURCELL is a novel about two cursed brothers, a pair of eldritch orphans, the vexed nature of truth, and the yearnings of that treacherous sonofabitch the human heart.
IAN WEIR is a playwright, screenwriter, TV showrunner, and the author of two previously published novels. Daniel O’Thunder was shortlisted for the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize for Best First Book, as well as the Canadian Authors Association Award for fiction, the Ethel Wilson Fiction Prize, and the amazon.ca First Novel Award. Will Starling was longlisted for the International DUBLIN Literary Award and shortlisted for the Sunburst Award. Among his extensive television credits are his work as creator and showrunner of Arctic Air and as writer and executive producer of the acclaimed gangland miniseries, Dragon Boys. He has won two Geminis, four Leos, a Jessie, and a Writers Guild of Canada Screenwriting Award.