Follow the Silence

Author: W.J. Walker

Product Unavailable

PRODUCT INFORMATION

Summary

Description

Jimmy "Boomer" Benjamin has arrived at the place he has dreaded and dreamed of for the past fifteen years: the town he grew up in. Nearing retirement and seeking closure to a novel that has plagued him for decades, Jimmy is determined to break the long-held silence that muted two murders. One was rumoured to have been committed by his father. The other was a part of his own nightmarish past-and resulted in his excommunication from his community.

Jimmy's journey begins and ends at Lighthouse Pier on the bleak and beautiful shores of Lake Erie, where memories, visions, shadows, love, and violence converge and break-for better or worse. Encouraged and directed by his novel, his opus of truth, his testament to fiction, Jimmy gives himself permission to come home.

Follow the Silence is a disturbing portrait of racism and homophobia in small-town Ontario, a stirring investigation into collective memory, and a deeply felt examination of one man's reckoning with his past. Timely, moving, and populated by a cast of unforgettable characters, Follow the Silence shows readers the remarkable power of truth.

About the Author

W.J. WALKER grew up in Port Dover and Otter Lake, Ontario. He is retired from a thirty-year career as a high school English teacher and literary pundit. A stroke survivor, sommelier, speaker, and proponent of truth and reconciliation in Canada, Walker holds an MA in Modern Critical Theory. His thesis was written on Rime of the Ancient Mariner by Samuel Taylor Coleridge, whose allegories and images run through Follow the Silence.A first-time author and lifelong reader and writer, Walker belongs to several book clubs and the Muskoka Authors Association. He lives in Huntsville, Ontario, with his wife.