Most Popular Books by David Adams Richards

When twelve-year-old Sidney Henderson pushes his friend Connie off the roof of a local church in a moment of anger, he makes a silent vow: Let Connie live and I will never harm another soul. At that very moment, Connie stands, laughs, and walks away. Sidney keeps his promise through adulthood despite the fact that his insular, rural community uses his pacifism to exploit him. Sidney''s son Lyle, however, assumes an increasingly aggressive stance in defense of his family. When a small boy is killed in a tragic accident and Sidney is blamed, Lyle takes matters into his own hands. In his effort to protect the people he loves -- his beautiful and fragile mother, Elly; his gifted sister, Autumn; and his innocent brother, Percy -- it is Lyle who will determine his family''s legacy.

In Lines on the Water, David Adams Richards writes eloquently and movingly about his life on the shores of one of the world''s great fishing rivers. With the same insight and emotion that have won him praise for his fiction, Richards brings to life a community centred on fly-fishing -- a sport that has become, for many, a way of life. Weaving together tales of the guides and poachers, the "sports" and the city slickers, Richards pays tribute to all who have shared in the joy of fishing the Miramichi. This is a book about our relationship with nature, about hunters and fishermen, friendship and family, history and memory. Lines on the Water teems with lore and wisdom, humour, and most of all, passion.

David Adams Richards’ Governor General’s Award-winning novel is a powerful tale of resignation and struggle, fierce loyalties and compassion. This book is the first in Richards’ acclaimed Miramichi trilogy. Set in a small mill town in northern New Brunswick, it draws us into the lives of a community of people who live there, including: Joe Walsh, isolated and strong in the face of a drinking problem; his wife, Rita, willing to believe the best about people; and their teenage daughter Adele, whose nature is rebellious and wise, and whose love for her father wars with her desire for independence. Richards’ unforgettable characters are linked together in conflict, and in inarticulate love and understanding. Their plight as human beings is one we share.

David Adams Richards takes us behind his gun and into the Canadian forest for his most powerful work of non-fiction yet. In his brilliant non-fiction, David Adams Richards - first and foremost one of Canada''s greatest and best-beloved novelists - has been writing a kind of memoir by other means. Like his previous titles Lines On Water, about his pursuit of angling, and Hockey Dreams, about the game his disabled body prevented him from playing, Facing the Hunter explores the meaning of a sport and the way in which it touches lives, not least that of the author. And as with God Is, his recent book about his faith, it is also an impassioned defence of a set of values and a way of life that Richards believes are under attack. Lovers of David Adams Richards'' novels will be fascinated and enlightened to note the interplay between his former life as a keen hunter - he hunts less and less these days, as he explains - and the narratives and characters of his fiction. But this is also a perfect starting point for anyone coming new to Richards. The storytelling in this book, the evocation of the Canadian wild and those who venture into it, the sheer power of the prose, show a great writer at the height of his powers.

With The Friends of Meager Fortune, award-winning author David Adams Richards continues his exploration of New Brunswick’s Miramichi Valley, and the universal human matters that concern us all. A story of good and evil, fate and hope, set against the background of a logging town on the brink of change. Will Jameson has a temperament of iron, standing up to men twice his age when he takes over the Jameson lumber company after his father''s death. His younger brother Owen is sensitive, literary and fanciful. But when Will dies suddenly and Owen''s beloved Lula rejects him, Owen''s deeper character comes to light: joining the army in the hope of getting himself killed, instead Owen returns home a decorated war hero. Then he falls in love with the beautiful, childlike Camellia—the wife of Will''s old friend Reggie Glidden—and soon Owen and Camellia find themselves watched on all sides, caught in the teeth of an entire town''s gossip and hypocrisy. Inexorably, they are pulled into a chain of events that will end with death, disappearance and a sensational trial. At the same time, realizing his destiny, Owen takes over the family business and begins what will become the greatest cut in New Brunswick history, his men setting up camp on the notoriously dangerous Good Friday Mountain. The teamsters spend months in fierce ice and snow, daily pitting themselves against nature and risking their lives for scant reward, in the last moments before the coming of mechanization that will make them obsolete. This heroic, brutal life is all Meager Fortune, the camp keeper, knows. A good and innocent man, he shows unexpected resolution in the face of the betrayals of the more worldly men around him.

What had happened, from those days until now? And why had it? And how had his life gone? And who was to blame? Or why did he think he had to blame anyone? Certainly he couldn’t even blame Mr. Roach, caught in the same turmoil as everyone believing half-truths in order to blame other people. These are the forlorn thoughts of Alex Chapman, the tragic anti-hero of David Adams Richards’ masterful novel The Lost Highway. An exploration of the philosophical contortions of which man is capable, the novel tracks the desperate journey of an eternally lost and orphaned child/man who has nearly squandered his frail birthright but might yet earn some degree of redemption. David Adams Richards’ The Lost Highway is a taut psychological thriller that goes far beyond the genre into the worlds of Leo Tolstoy, and Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights, as well as classical Greek mythology, testing the very limits of humankind’s all too tenuous grasp on morality.

A suspenseful and moving novel which has at its centre one of Richards’ most memorable and haunting characters. It is the fall of 1989 in a small Miramichi mill town. Jerry Bines is acquitted of murder and returns home to his estranged wife and young son, with hopes for a new beginning. But when he learns that Gary Percy Rils has escaped from prison, he has good reason to fear for his own safety and that of others. In his attempts to protect his family from Rils by taking him under his wing, Bines sets in motion a series of events that ultimately leads to tragedy. The story of what happens unfolds piece by piece, as related by police reports, interviews, and by a man to a boy. Vivid in its sense of place, this penetrating chronicle of lives is both dark and redemptive, devastating and comic. This novel was made into a Gemini Award-winning film of the same name.

With a voice as Canadian as winter, David Adams Richards reflects on the place of hockey in the Canadian soul. The lyrical narrative of Hockey Dreams flows from Richards'' boyhood games on the Miramichi to heated debates with university professors who dare to back the wrong team. It examines the globalization of hockey, and how Canadians react to the threat of foreigners beating us at "our" game. Part memoir, part essay on national identity, part hockey history, Hockey Dreams is a meditation by one of Canada''s finest writers on the essence of the game that helps define our nation.

In the 1920s, Janie McLeary and George King run one of the first movie theatres in the Maritimes. The marriage of the young Irish Catholic woman to an older English man is thought scandalous, but they work happily together, playing music to accompany the films. When George succumbs to illness and dies, leaving Janie with one young child and another on the way, the unscrupulous Joey Elias tries to take over the business. One night, deceived by the bank manager and Elias into believing she will lose her mortgage, Janie resolves to go and ask for money from the Catholic houses. Elias has sent out men to stop her, so she leaps out the back window and with a broken rib she swims in the dark across the icy Miramichi River, doubting her own sanity. Astonishingly, she finds herself face to face that night with influential Lord Beaverbrook, who sees in her tremendous character and saves her business. Not only does she survive, she prospers; she becomes wealthy, but ostracized. Even her own father helps Elias plot against her. Yet Janie McLeary King thwarts them and brings first-run talking pictures to the town. River of the Brokenhearted is a multi-generational epic of rivalries, misunderstandings, rumours; the abuse of power, what weak people will do for love, and the true power of doing right; of a pioneer and her legacy in the lives of her son and grandchildren.

In this invaluable contribution to the continuing debate about religious belief, David Adams Richards offers an exhilaratingly fresh perspective and a voice more impassioned, heartfelt, and sometimes furious, than anything written about God by an atheist. David Adams Richards, one of Canada’s most beloved and celebrated authors, has been wrestling with questions of morality, faith, and religion ever since he was a child. They have always informed his fiction. Now he examines their role in his own life and spells out his own belief, in what is his most self-revealing work to date. With characteristic honesty, Richards charts his rocky relationship with his cradle Catholicism, his battles with personal demons, his encounters with men who were proud to be murderers, and the many times in his life when he has been witness to what he unapologetically calls miracles. In this subtly argued, highly personal polemic, David Adams Richards insists that the presence of God cannot be denied, and that many of those who espouse atheism also know that presence, though they would not admit it to anyone—including themselves. Every follower of today’s battle between faith and atheism, and every lover of David Adams Richards’ superb fiction, will find God Is revelatory. “I believe that all of us, even those who are atheists, seek God—or at the very least not one of us would be unhappy if God appeared and told us that the universe was actually His creation. Oh, we might put Him on trial for making it so hard, and get angry at Him, too, but we would be very happy that He is here. Well, He is.” Questions of faith, morality, the role of unseen forces in our destinies, have been central to the fiction of David Adams Richards. Now he directly addresses what these questions have meant to him in his own life, and what he has come firmly to believe. He has always been a courageous and uncompromisingly honest writer—but never more so than here.

David Adams Richards finds universal truths in the very particular setting of New Brunswick’s Miramichi Valley. This, his first novel, provides a window upon a world that is as unsettling, as uncontrollable, and as inescapably authentic as a sudden brawl. The frustrations of the community are brought into focus in the plights of 20-year-old Kevin Dulse, his family, and especially his wild young friends. An intensely realistic story, it stands firm upon its engaging, unaffected characters and the raw talent of its then 22-year-old author.

Cindi and Ivan Basterache have been married only twenty months. There is a disagreement over a loan, and rumours of violence in the ensuing quarrel begin to spread throughout the northern New Brunswick mill town in which they live, setting in motion a series of events and misunderstandings. As Ivan struggles to reconcile with Cindi, the community turns against him, fuelled by his father’s self-deluded lies and misguided attempts to set things right, exposing the other side of good intentions and leading to the novel’s powerful conclusion. Disturbing, tender-hearted, and at times darkly humorous, Evening Snow Will Bring Such Peace reveals the strange unrecognized power in us all to shape one another’s destinies.

The Terris are engaging people, but they are a family in collapse. Alcoholism, drugs, and loveless sex have reduced them to a petty and wasted bunch. Worse, they typify aspects of the larger community besieged by financial woes and by creeping economic and cultural Americanization. What David Adams Richards accomplishes is no mean feat: his characters are at times vicious, sleazy, and even outright dim, yet he manages to entitle them to the interest and sympathy of the reader. Even more now than at its first publication in 1981, Lives of Short Duration’s sharp, essential insights have significance for readers seeking to understand the modern Canadian predicament.

Press baron, entrepreneur, art collector, and wartime minister in Churchill''s cabinet, Max Aitken was a colonial Canadian extraordinaire. Rising from a hardscrabble childhood in New Brunswick, he became a millionaire at age 25, earned the title of Lord Beaverbrook at 38, and by age 40 was the most influential newspaperman in the world. Fiercely loyal to the British Empire, he was nonetheless patronized by London''s upper class, whose country he worked tirelessly to protect during World War II. David Adams Richards, one of Canada''s preeminent novelists, celebrates Beaverbrook''s heroic achievements in this perceptive interpretive biography.

sible."--BOOK JACKET.

Literary legend David Adams Richards follows the epic Miramichi Trilogy with a startling standalone novel of concentrated power. The Raskin brothers were once proud to be producers of a much sought-after material of great benefit to society--asbestos. But now their mine is under close scientific scrutiny, with reports of serious illness linked to the place. The world is changing, no doubt for the better... But in the shadow of the mine, the values of a whole community are transforming, in more sinister ways. The Raskins'' nephew Byron, a war hero and man of wealth, urges the brothers to look for other, less toxic minerals to extract. But meanwhile his own world is unravelling in ways that are unlikely ever to be fixed. His wife Carmel, whom he vaingloriously believed he was rescuing with his marriage proposal, has become an intellectual and political poseur. She and her son Albert are contemptuous of the values of Byron and his kind, while still finding use for his wealth and property. Carmel and Albert, it seems, are heralds of a new world addicted to mimicry and empty self-promotion, to delusions and temptations. Its victims are growing in number: a college professor in town is falsely accused of sexual harassment; a young woman is slipped an hallucinogen at a party with appalling consequences for her and two boys. And what of poor, naive Eva Mott, the captivating beauty who wished to be like her talented cousin Clara? Her story and the book that bears her name will haunt you. The Tragedy of Eva Mott has all the power and brilliance--and many flashes of wry humour--of David Adams Richards at the very top of his form. It will attract controversy but its fierce authenticity cannot be denied.

Dancers at Night (1978), a collection of short stories, appeared while Richards was at work on his third novel.

Highly charged and profoundly important, Incidents in the Life of Markus Paul is a new masterpiece from one of Canada’s greatest writers. On a bright morning in June 1985, a young Micmac man starts his first day of work—but by noon he is dead, killed mysteriously in the fourth hold of the cargo ship Lutheran. Hector Penniac had been planning to go to university, perhaps to study medicine. Roger Savage, a loner who has had to make his own way since his youth, comes under suspicion of killing Hector over a union card and a morning’s work. Even if he can’t quite put it into words, Roger immediately sees the ways in which Hector’s death will be viewed as symbolic, as more than an isolated tragedy—and that he is caught in a chain of events that will become more explosive with each passing day. The aging chief of Hector’s band, Amos Paul, tries to reduce the tensions raised by the investigation into Hector’s death and its connection to a host of other simmering issues, from territorial lines to fishing rights. His approach leads him into conflict with Isaac Snow, a younger and more dynamic man whom many in the band would prefer to lead them—especially when the case attracts press attention in the form of an ambitious journalist named Max Doran, the first of many outsiders to bring his own agenda and motives onto the Micmac reserve. Joel Ginnish, Isaac’s volatile and sometimes violent friend, decides to bring justice to Roger Savage when the authorities refuse to, blockading the reserve in order to do so. And though perhaps no one really means for it to happen, soon a single incident grows ineluctably into a crisis that engulfs a whole society, a whole province and in some ways a whole country. Twenty years later, RCMP officer Markus Paul—Chief Amos Paul’s grandson, who was fifteen years old when Hector was killed—tries to piece together the clues surrounding Hector Penniac’s death. The decades have passed, and much about the case has been twisted beyond recognition by the many ways that different people have sought to exploit it. But, haunted by the past, Markus still struggles towards a truth that will snap “those chains that had once seemed impossible to break.” (290) This is a novel that begins with an instant from today’s headlines, and digs down into the marrow to explore the oldest themes we know: murder and betrayal, race and history, the brutal and chaotic forces that guide the groups we are drawn into. Nothing is one-sided in David Adams Richards’ world—even the most scheming characters have moments of grace, while the most benevolent are shown to have selfish motives, or the need to show off their goodness. All are depicted with an almost Biblical gravity, framed by an understated genius of storytelling that makes this novel at once both an utterly gripping mystery, and a vitally important document of Canada’s broken past and divided present.

Set in a small town in New Brunswick, this intricate, multi-layered novel revolves around the hapless Shackle family. There is Garth, a promising hockey player whose career has been destroyed; Vicki, his beautiful, self-destructive wife; and Garth’s brother Neil, a successful academic haunted by the life and family he has left behind. Then there is Peter Bathurst, a former Micmac leader desperate to stave off an investigation into his mishandling of band money. Peter’s only hope may be Vicki Shackle, and as the story of their lives unfolds and intersects over the course of a single day, events lead to the novel’s dramatic climax. Hope in the Desperate Hour is a riveting and unforgettable novel that brilliantly juxtaposes the world of the privileged elite with the reality of those to whom life has dealt very different cards.

From literary legend David Adams Richards comes the breathtaking final instalment of his epic John Delano Trilogy. When John Delano is asked by the sister of Orville MacDurmot to investigate his violent death and the accusations of murder that haunted his final days, Delano embarks on a journey that will pull him deep into Miramichi''s shadowy history and the pasts of those who conspired against him. Bullied as a child for his meagre upbringing and blindness in one eye, Orville broke from his humble roots to become an internationally renowned archeologist, a position those along the Miramichi treat with both pride and resentment. Not one to suffer fools gladly, Orville finds himself progressively at odds with the region''s elite, who wish to use his eminence for their own gains and enlist him for their political causes. As resentments old and new fester, suspicion grows and a book titled Darkness increasingly seems the origin of a crime unlike anything the Miramichi has witnessed before, Orville finds his reputation--and his life--in danger. When the remains of a young woman and man are discovered on a rugged shoreline where Orville has been working on an archeological dig, his enemies finally see their opportunity to destroy him. In a saga crossing decades, continents and generations, yet rooted in the richly conceived world of Richards'' Miramichi, Darkness explores the shocking lengths we travel to fulfill personal ambition, and the tragic price we pay to defend our moral principles.

In this provocative essay, David Adams Richards brings together his ideas about writing - how great works of literature are created, the writer''s essential position as an outsider, and the difficulties writers experience in the pursuit of personal truth. The quest for truth always comes with a price, says Richards, but it also results in freedom for writers and their characters, and sometimes results in great works of literature. Says Richards, "What I say to young writers is never fear that you too will be evaluated most harshly in your life for telling the truth. That the truth, not as others see it, but as you do, can only be told by you ... The most important gift you can give the world is to write how you feel ... There are no guarantees if you do this, but there is no hope if you do not." Playing the Inside Out is the second Antonine Maillet-Northrop Frye Lecture, sponsored by the Université de Moncton. It was presented on April 28, 2007 in Moncton, New Brunswick, at the Frye Festival.

From one of Canada''s most celebrated and controversial novelists comes a tale of dark aspirations, betrayal and murder. When Jamie Musselman''s father is found dead from an apparent self-inflicted gunshot, it doesn''t take long for rumours and suspicions about Jamie to swirl through Miramachi. Why was Jamie also shot that night? Why was money discovered under his pillow? Was it true, as some of the boys at his school claimed, that Jamie possessed a cruel nature and had even once been spotted killing robins? As the years bend on, Jamie continues to maintain his innocence, but few others, aside from his fiancée, Gertie, believe him. Including the police, who finally arrest him. Including the judge, who convicts Jamie of murder. But nothing is ever as it seems in Miramachi, a place where vanity, resentment and crimes of opportunity are forever brewing, and unlikely alliances are continually being formed. In the weeks before the murder, a self-proclaimed revolutionary had returned to Miramachi after being expelled from university; a career criminal falsely claiming Indigenous heritage had been released from jail; and a hapless bully of a father—Gertie''s father—had discovered there was money in the Musselmans'' home, kept in the very study where Jamie''s father was found dead. Is there more to the story than the townsfolk believe? Richly conceived and fearless in its examination of morality and justice, prejudice and corruption, Songs of Love on a December Night is an epic exploration of the evil we are capable of and of the redemption we can aspire to.

The masterful new novel from a Canadian literary legend at the height of his powers. John Delano is a broken man, seemingly at the end of everything: the end of his legendary but controversial career as a police officer; the end of his sad and difficult marria≥ the end of his years-long search for the truth of what happened to his missing son; the end of his fruitless quest for personal redemption; even, perhaps, the end of his life. Only one small thing keeps him going: his conviction that he has a final case to solve, centred around the disappearance years ago of a young boy placed in foster care in Saint John, New Brunswick. Following the delicate and convoluted thread of that case takes John to unexpected places: dangerously close to powerful civil servants hoarding damning secrets; to a Canadian humanitarian mission in Rwanda before and during the genocide; to New York and the compromised corridors of the United Nations; and deep into his own haunted past. With this new masterwork, David Adams Richards continues to astonish us, weaving familiar themes in fresh new ways. His people are still rooted in his beloved Miramichi region of New Brunswick, but his storytelling--as always, displaying his genius for plot and his extraordinary empathy for his flawed characters--has expanded to encompass the much wider world that his people traverse: the politically charged, intricately connected modern universe in all its richness, contradiction, devastation and little points of hope. In the end, what ties John Delano to every other unforgettable character in this compelling work is the shared search for principles to live by: as each person decides what those principles shall be, their fates inevitably and heartbreakingly intertwine.

A collection of two Christmas stories set in Miramichi, New Brunswick. In the first story, two boys set out to rescue a small black puppy and in the second story, a group of brothers and a neighbourhood child search for the perfect Christmas tree.

A thrilling, revelatory collection from one of the most provocative and original literary voices in Canada today. David Adams Richards is one of Canada''s greatest writers, his place in the pantheon ensured by seventeen novels of consistent power and vision. He is also the author of four marvelous non-fiction ruminations on religious faith, hockey, hunting and fishing and their roles in his and the nation''s identities. His loyal readers may feel they know him well. But they also know that this is a writer who never fails to surprise. This new collection of essays--his first in a quarter-century--is rich with revelations and insights, deepening our appreciation for this major talent and offering a provoking thought on every page. Murder is one of David''s great subjects. In his novels, in the Russian classics he loves and in his life, murder has been a shaping force. The title of this volume refers to a suite of essays on the subject: a hitchhiker with whom David strikes up an unnerving philosophical debate; the killers of the Miramichi and their victims; Caligula; the villains of Russian literature; and, forever in David''s mind as he examines this grim topic, the self-deception involved in the allure of evil. But in this wide-ranging collection there is much to delight in too: married love; family; travel; the beauty of the natural world; even Wayne Gretzky is invited to the party. David''s principled outlook and spirituality inform his thinking thoroughout. And he draws many of his favourite writers into the discussion--from Tolstoy to Dostoevsky, Mary Shelley to Alden Nowlan--revelling in their work, as we do in David''s, as sources of ideas, inspiration and sheer literary pleasure. As a considerable bonus, the book also contains at its midpoint a literary debut: a slim but substantial collection of David''s poetry.

From a coal mine in Mexico to a wealthy family in New Brunswick, this extraordinary novel revolves around a single mysterious woman: Mary Cyr. Mary Cyr opens in Mexico, just as a disaster strikes a small town: a coal-mine has collapsed, with thirteen men trapped inside. Less than forty-eight hours later, the authorities summarily decide to abandon all hope of finding survivors and seal up the mine entrance—willfully oblivious to the half-dozen souls still breathing below ground. Shortly after that, a thirteen-year-old Mexican boy, Victor, is discovered dead in the hotel room of a Canadian visitor—a 45-year-old woman, and heiress to a vast fortune, who goes by the name Mary Cyr. Thus begins this shocking, brilliant and compelling novel—a late-career tour de force by one of our most unique and powerful writers.This unwinding tale will take us from a harsh jail cell in Mexico, where Mary Cyr is imprisoned, deep into Canadian police officer John Delano''s past, and even further into the murky depths of a wealthy New Brunswick family whose ties to mining, newspapers and a host of other interests lead to the highest corridors of power.

Nachdem Sydney Henderson beinahe den Tod eines Freundes verursacht hat, schwört er für den Rest seines Lebens jeglicher Gewalt ab. Er wehrt sich nicht, nimmt alles hin, auch die übelsten Verleumdungen und Demütigungen. Sohn Lyle sinnt auf Rache.

Wild Green Light is a collaboration that brings together the poetry of acclaimed author David Adams Richards and award-winning writer Margo Wheaton. Drawing upon a fiercely shared passion for the natural world--as well as a literary friendship that has spanned more than two decades--each of these New Brunswick-born writers pays powerful tribute to a rapidly disappearing rural way of life. Atmospheric and spare, these poems take us into a world of deep woods, abandoned fields, kitchen tables, and back roads. The book is divided into two sections, representing the unique voice and perspective of each author. Wheaton''s section consists of two elegant lyric poems, as well as a fifteen-part sequence written in a poetic form known as "ghazals." Sorrowing and precise, the poems in this sequence survey the remains of her working-class childhood home, a once-thriving place, ravaged by family alcoholism and despair. Both celebratory and grieving, these poems grapple intensely with larger issues of working-class poverty, limited choices, and the chaotic legacy of addiction. The book''s opening section gathers together twenty lyric poems by Richards, each one steeped in his own direct, visceral experience of his beloved Miramichi. Bold, plain-spoken, and elegiac, these deeply felt poems explore the grand terrain of love and loss and are marked with the same purposefulness, acuity, and compassion that appear in Richards'' fiction. Alike and different, these two writers share a devotion to the physical landscapes of New Brunswick and call us to fiercely cherish the beauty of rural life and experience.

It was night, It was winter In the heavy window frost I saw falling angels splinter In this collection of deeply personal poetry, David Adams Richards offers readers both his searing observations of and profound sympathy for those he writes of, be they his own family or animals, like the "dry doe" who will soon be at the mercy of the coyotes. He captures the soul of winter in a crisp, evocative description: it is a time when "the snow begins to fall at four, / And a dead cold has entered in the bones." Equally, though differently, captured is a snapshot of life at fourteen, when he and his friends were "Young lonesome firebrands / Cigarettes aglow in the summer weather." Here, too, are indictments of war and comments on Catholicism and faith, as well as retrospective examinations of his own past, of past relationships, and moments lost in time. Richards comments unflinchingly on the poet''s life (the poet as soldier, as gunslinger), of his origins in Newcastle, New Brunswick, and his love for Peg at seventeen. In each poem, he crafts a vision and carefully cradles emotion in his writer?s hands for the reader to feel and hold themselves. Ultimately, Richards assures us, our soul will be free and will "sing for eternity."

Notes on a Writer''s Life is the author''s account of his more than fifty years as a writer. It chronicles his early childhood, his high school years of turmoil and rebellion, and his uneasy relationship with both publishers and academics. Throughout, Richards records his continuous investigation into human conflict, into the chasm between the seeking of power and the knowledge of love. The book also deliberates on his examination into the nature of violence, both overt and coercive, that he has considered in thirty-five books. Richards describes his travels to various parts of the world, his love of the sea, his love of Spain, and his fight against alcoholism. Crucially and poignantly, he recounts how for years his wife Peggy has been his greatest ally and supporter. Notes on a Writer''s Life also includes his relationships with other writers -- his respect for Alden Nowlan, Alistair MacLeod, P.K. Page, Joel Hines, and Patrick Lane, and his friendship with Ray Fraser among others. Here, too, are his views on writers like Orwell, Tolstoy and Dostoyevsky. Readers will learn of his determination to write against the odds, from the early books like The Coming of Winter, Blood Ties and Lives of Short Duration, to his later works, such as Mercy Among the Children, Crimes Against My Brother, and Darkness. Richards believes that suffering is inherent and so is joy. He reflects on the absolute necessity of reaching toward a spiritual life (if not a religious one) as well as his knowledge of war and revolutions, and how both swallow humanity''s greater need for justice and liberty. According to Professor William Connor, "Judged by the quality, scope, volume and variety of his writing - his stubborn almost compulsive bravery (Richards) towers over the great majority of contemporary Canadian writers."