Once We Had a Country

Literature & Fiction

McGill, Robert

Literary

Jonathan Cape Ltd.

Discourses Preached on Various Occasions in the Course of Ministerial Duty (Classic Reprint)

Self-Help

Spiritual

Forgotten Books

A richly textured novel of idealism and romance, Once We Had a Country re-imagines the impact of the Vietnam War by way of the women and children who fled with the draft dodgers. It's the summer of 1972. Maggie, a young schoolteacher, leaves the United States to settle with her boyfriend, Fletcher, on a farm near Niagara Falls. Fletcher is avoiding the Vietnam draft, but they've also come to Harroway with a loftier aim: to start a commune, work the land and create a new model for society. Hopes are high for life at Harroway; equally so for Maggie and Fletcher's budding relationship, heady as it is with passion, jealousy and uncertainty. As the summer passes, more people come to the farm--just not who Maggie and Fletcher expected. Then the US government announces the end of the draft, and Fletcher faces increasing pressure from his family to return home. At the same time, Maggie must deal with the recent disappearance of her father, a missionary, in the jungle of Laos. What happened in those days before her father vanished, and how will his life and actions affect Maggie's future? Once We Had a Country is a literary work of the highest order, a novel that re-imagines an era we thought we knew, and that compels us to consider our own belief systems and levels of tolerance.

Knopf Canada

In this fascinating debut novel, a woman's disappearance unlocks the secrets of a small town, a place where it seems everyone has something to hide...

The Mysteries

MCCLELLAND STEWART

A twenty-eight-year-old writer bursts onto the scene with this virtuoso debut novel in which a woman’s disappearance unlocks the dark secrets of a small town“Secrets had a way of growing inside you. It became difficult to breathe sometimes, a struggle in the company of other people to pretend that all was well. Mike would never forgive her if he knew what she’d done.” – from The Mysteries With literary finesse and an assured eye for the complexities of our most human desires and failings, Robert McGill has created a multi-layered, utterly engaging novel set in a small Ontario community in which, it seems, everyone has something to hide. Alice Pederson has been missing for almost two years. Her husband, Mike, and their children must carry on despite grief and the frustrations of a police investigation that has hit a dead end. Then, when remains are found along a nearby shoreline, a series of coincidences emerges: young Daniel Barrie returns suddenly from school in England; local former hockey coach Stoddart Fremlinis arrested in connection with Alice’s murder, then crashes his small plane and escapes across a dark field; Rocket DeWitt, once the town hockey star and among the last people to see Alice alive, abruptly leaves town; Bronwen Ferry, the insurance investigator, pursues Alice’s husband’s claim for reasons of her own; and something out in the bush is making grisly attacks on farm animals. Meanwhile, Native groups are protesting the building of a henge on the grounds of Cam Usher’s wildlife park, an area they know to be a sacred burial site. Adding to the disquiet, an unknown traveller arrives one night carrying a weather-beaten notebook, with instructions to give it only to Alice Pederson. Weaving back and forth in time, and told from the distinct perspectives ofits cast of memorable and eccentric characters, The Mysteries hums with tension and vividly evokes the tangled web of relationships within a small town. Robert McGill is a hugely talented and inventive new writer who has the ability to draw us into the world he has created and hold us, rapt, until the very last page. From the Hardcover edition.

War Is Here: The Vietnam War and Canadian Literature

History & Criticism

McGill-Queen's University Press

Canada did not fight in the Vietnam War, but the conflict seized the Canadian imagination with an energy that has persisted. In War Is Here Robert McGill explains how the war contributed to a golden age for writing in Canada. As authors addressed the conflict, they helped to construct an enduring myth of Canada as liberal, hospitable, and humanitarian. For many writers, the war was one that Canadians could and should fight against, if not in person, then on the page. In this pioneering account of war-related Canadian literature McGill observes how celebrated books of the era channel Vietnam, sometimes in subtle but pervasive ways. He examines authors’ attempts to educate their readers about American imperialism and Canadian complicity, and he discusses how writers repeatedly used language evoking militarism and violence – from the figure of the United States as a rapist to the notion of Canada as a “peaceable kingdom” – in order to make Canadians feel more intensely about their country. McGill also addresses the recent spate of prize-winning Canadian novels about the war that have renewed Vietnam’s resonance in the wake of twenty-first century conflicts involving America. War Is Here vividly revisits a galvanizing time in world history and Canadian life, offering vital insights into the Vietnam War’s influence on how people think about Canada, its place in the world, and the power of the written word to make a difference.

Many authors have been accused of betraying their loved ones by turning them into fictional characters. In The Treacherous Imagination, Robert McGill examines the ethics of writing such stories. He argues that while fiction has long appealed to readers with its narratives of private life, contemporary autobiographical fiction channels a widespread ambivalence about the value of telling all in a confessional age—an age in which fiction has an unprecedented power to leave people feeling libeled or exposed when they recognize themselves in it.Observing that the interests of authors and their loved ones in such cases are often less divergent than they appear, McGill assess strategies by which both parties might use fiction not to hurt each other but to revise and revitalize intimacy. Discussing authors such as Philip Roth, Alice Munro, A. S. Byatt, and Hanif Kureishi, McGill questions whether people should always require exclusivity of each other with regard to the stories they tell about private life. Instead, authors and their intimates might jointly embrace fiction’s playful, transgressive qualities, even while reexamining the significance of that fiction’s intimations.In treating autobiographical fiction as both a willful public indiscretion and a mediator of intimate relations, The Treacherous Imagination provides a comprehensive account of the various potentials that fiction holds to harm and to help those who write it, those who read it, and those who see themselves in it.

The Treacherous Imagination: Intimacy, Ethics, and Autobiographical Fiction

Ohio State University Press

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by McGill, Robert. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Books by McGill, Robert

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by McGill, Robert. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Once We Had a Country

Discourses Preached on Various Occasions in the Course of Ministerial Duty (Classic Reprint)

Once We Had a Country

The Mysteries

The Mysteries

War Is Here: The Vietnam War and Canadian Literature

War Is Here: The Vietnam War and Canadian Literature

The Treacherous Imagination: Intimacy, Ethics, and Autobiographical Fiction

The Treacherous Imagination: Intimacy, Ethics, and Autobiographical Fiction

The Treacherous Imagination: Intimacy, Ethics, and Autobiographical Fiction