Canada

Synopsis

First, I'll tell about the robbery our parents committed. Then the murders, which happened later. In 1956, Del Parsons' family came to a stop in Great Falls, Montana, the way many military families did following the war. His father, Bev, was a talkative, plank-shouldered man, an airman from Alabama with an optimistic and easy-scheming nature. Del and his twin sister, Berner, could easily see why their mother might have been attracted to him. But their mother Neeva - from an educated, immigrant, Jewish family - was shy, artistic and alienated from their father's small-town world of money scrapes and living on-the-fly. It was more bad instincts and bad luck that Del's parents decided to rob the bank. They weren't reckless people. In the days following the arrest, Del and Berner lock themselves inside the house and wait for the friend their mother said would come. When no-one does, Berner runs away. Del, a solitary child obsessed with bee-keeping and chess, does not have friends to call on. Del is saved before the authorities think to arrive. Driving across the Montana border into Saskatchewan his life hurtles towards the unknown, towards a hotel in a deserted town, towards the violent and enigmatic American Arthur Remlinger, and towards Canada itself - a landscape of rescue and abandonment. But as Del discovers, in this new world of secrets and upheaval, he is not the only one whose own past lies on the other side of a border. In Canada, Richard Ford has created a masterpiece. A haunting and visionary novel of vast landscapes, complex identities and fragile humanity. It questions the fine line between the normal and the extraordinary, and the moments in our lives that take us into new worlds.