Ballistics by D W Wilson

Ballistics by D W Wilson

It is summer and the Canadian Rockies are on fire. As the forests blaze, Alan West heads into their shadows, returning from university to his grandfather's home in the remote Kootenay Valley, wherethe man who raised him has suffered a heart attack. Confronting his own mortality, the tough and taciturn Cecil West has a dying request for his grandson: track down the father Alan has never known so that the old man can make peace with him.

And so Alan begins his search for the elusive Jack West, a man who skipped town before his son could walk and of whom his grandfather has always refused to speak. His quest will lead him to Archer, an old American soldier who decades ago went AWOL across the border into Canada. Archer has been carrying a heavy burden for many years, and through him Alan learns the stories of two broken families who came together, got too close, and then fell apart in tragic ways.

Ballistics is a remarkable first novel, about family ties and the wounds that can linger for generations when those relationships are betrayed.

Bernardine Evaristo is the award-winning author of seven books, including her most recent novel, Mr Loverman (Hamish Hamilton/Penguin-Random House, 2013).

Carys Bray is the author of a collection of short stories, Sweet Home, and two novels, A Song for Issy Bradley, which was shortlisted for the Costa Book Awards, and The Museum of You.

D. W. Wilson is a short story writer, novelist, Canadian citizen by birth and temperament, video game nerd, teacher, and redneck - among other things. He is currently between books, but his previous works are a short story collection, Once You Break a Knuckle, and Ballistics, a novel.

Donal Ryan was born in Tipperary in 1976; he's a novelist, short-story writer and Fellow of the University of Limerick.

Grace McCleen studied English Literature at Oxford and York Universities. She has written three critically acclaimed novels and reviews fiction for national newspapers.

Nikesh Shukla is the author of Coconut Unlimited, Meatspace and The Time Machine, the editor of the collection The Good Immigrant and a sitcom writer.

Rowan Hisayo Buchanan is the author of the novel Harmless Like You, and her short work has appeared in, among other places, the Harvard Review, TriQuarterly, and NPR's Selected Shorts.