Man of Bone

Winner, Ottawa-Carleton Book Award

Shortlisted, Trillium Award

Man of Bone has a thriller's taste for blood, but Alan Cumyn delivers something more: a heart-wrenching portrait of an ordinary Canadian jerked into third-world terrorism. Bill Burridge, his wife and their little son have moved to the "island paradise" of Santa Irene on Bill's first diplomatic posting. At the short-staffed embassy, he is thrown, almost unbriefed, into work he scarcely understands. After less than two weeks, while driving alone on a "safe" highway to an afternoon of badminton in the country, he is snatched by revolutionaries.

Against his will, Burridge turns out under torture to be a "man of bone" who can't give up and die. His ignorance and low status make him useless to his captors, but they can't simply let him go. They continue to torture him until, distracted by other battles, they abandon him and his keeper in a mountain village. Suddenly one day helicopters rake the village with gunfire, and the whole situation turns upside down.

Alan Cumyn is well known for creating men with tender hearts and iron wills. Bill Burridge, angry at God for making him live, keeps his wits by remembering his and Maryse's courtship and marriage and their life with young Patrick. Although he isolates this part of himself from his torturers, he and his beloved family discover when he returns to Ottawa, barely alive, that "living happily ever after" will be more complex than they could have imagined.