Search results for ""Author Alan Cumyn""

Winner, Ottawa-Carleton Book AwardShortlisted, Trillium AwardMan 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.

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A father's untimely death, a gothic grandfather who falls in love with his son's beautiful widow, a mysterious girl, a rogue golfer, and the watchful eyes of two young people trying to overcome the quirky gravity of their own families -- these are the unlikely elements in this lyrical, funny, romantic novel.

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Winner of the OLA's Forest of Reading Silver Birch Express Award Sylvia Tull -- the girl whose very glance turns Owen's face into a burning tomato -- has moved away from the small village where Owen lives with his parents and two brothers. But he still has the birthday gift she gave him -- a stationery set, complete with stamped envelopes -- because she wants him to keep sending her stories. So Owen nervously begins to write Sylvia about all the things that are going on in his life. How his little brother, Leonard, got his head stuck in the bannister. The disastrous camping trip with his irritating girl cousins. How his new baby cousin will only stop screaming if Owen carries her. And he tells her about the most bewildering drama to hit the Skye household yet, when the boys' father quits his insurance job to write a novel, and all the Skyes have to cope with the consequences. Alan Cumyn has written an irresistible epistolary novel. Owen is a true writer in his head -- but getting the right words onto the page is another story. Young readers will easily identify as he wrestles with his spelling, with his writer's insecurity, and with his deep desire to tell Sylvia the truth about what is going on in his life, and in his heart.

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Winner, Ottawa-Carleton Book AwardShortlisted, Trillium AwardMan 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.

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