A brilliantly linked narrative that juxtaposes Hollywood in the 1920s with one of the bloodiest, most violent events of the nineteenth-century Canadian West: the Cypress Hills Massacre.Harry Vincent has arrived in Hollywood from Saskatchewan and landed a job at a movie studio. His big opportunity comes when studio owner Damon Ira Chance enlists him to find the elusive Shorty McAdoo. When Harry finally locates the old-time Western actor, he gradually uncovers a story that will become the basis for Chance’s film.In counterpoint to the hard-edged realm of Hollywood is the haunting story of a young drifter, known simply as “the Englishman’s boy,” whose fate is ultimately a tragic one. In May of 1873, he joins a group of wolf hunters heading north into Canada. It is a journey through an unforgiving land that climaxes in a brutal encounter with the Assiniboine Indians in the Cypress Hills.Vanderhaeghe’s rendering of the stark, dramatic beauty of the western landscape and of Hollywood in its most extravagant era provides a vivid background of scenes of action, adventure, and intrigue. Strongly evocative of time and place, The Englishman’s Boy is an unforgettable novel about power, greed, and the pull of dreams by one of Canada’s most acclaimed novelists.
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