Overview
Winner of the 2023 Crime Writers of Canada Award for Best Crime First Novel
āSam Shelstad has a funny, lively, engaging, peculiar mindācharming and surprising.ā āSheila Heti, bestselling author ofĀ MotherhoodĀ andĀ Pure Colour
This debut novel set in southern Ontario captures call-centre life, faded tourist attractions, and suburbia with oddball wit and sharp realism.
Colleen Weagle works in a call centre and lives in a bungalow with her mother in a quiet Toronto suburb. In her spare time she writes spec scripts for a CBC riding-school drama (her motherās favourite) and plays an online game set in a resort populated by reindeer. Itās a typical life. Except three months ago Colleenās husband Leonardāwho led a similarly monotonous lifeāwas found in a bog in the middle of the night, a two hoursā drive from home. Dead.
With a flatly optimistic belief in the power of routine, Colleen has been soldiering on, trying not to think too hard about all the unknowns surrounding the death. But when a local news photo twigs Colleenās memory of a mystery attendee at Leonardās funeral she snaps into action.
In the maddening company of her ornery co-worker Patti, she heads to Niagara Falls on a quest to find the truth behind the death. Amid the slot machines and grubby hotels, the pair stumble into the darker underworld of a faded tourist trap. What they find will lead straight to an episode from Colleenās adolescence she thought sheād put firmly behind her.
Bleakly madcap, with deadpan dialogue, Shelstadās debut novel is a noir anti-thriller reminiscent of Twin Peaks and the work of Ottessa Moshfegh and early Kate Atkinson. He captures call-centre life, ramshackle tourist attractions, and suburbia with wit and sharp realism, and reveals the undercurrents of melancholy and the truly bizarre that can run beneath even the most seemingly mild-mannered lives.
This book title, Citizens of Light (A Novel), ISBN: 9781990071058, by Sam Shelstad, published by Heritage Group Distribution (October 11, 2022) is available in paperback. Our minimum order quantity is 25 copies. All standard bulk book orders ship FREE in the continental USA and delivered in 4-10 business days.
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