Wounded during WW1 and briefly serving as a policeman in Ireland, Charles’ grandfather Alexander “Jack” Ambrose leaves his wife and baby son for Canada in 1922, returning empty-handed four years later. Why did he leave, what did he intend to do, what happened and why did he return? A century later his grandson Charles attempts to understand and connect to a man he had met only briefly, trying to reconstruct those “lost” years by writing a fictionalised account of this period in his grandfather’s life.

Having survived the horrors of war and disillusioned by the brutal repression he had witnessed in Ireland; Jack is attracted by the promise of new horizons on the Canadian prairies. Tantalised by the possibilities of the free land on offer to homesteaders willing to set up in Saskatchewan, he leaves his wife and new-born son and makes the long journey by sea and overland. But what Jack finds there does not match his expectations; he arrives in an isolated prairie town set within a vast and forbidding landscape, and hears stories of hostile conditions, harsh weather, and the disappointments of many who have failed to overcome the obstacles and struggled to survive. Aware of his lack of farming skills and knowledge, Jack attempts to gain experience by working as a farm hand, but the challenging conditions force him to take on other temporary work, first as a train cook and later at a logging camp in Northern Ontario. The narrative centres on the people and situations Jack encounters and how he deals with the challenges, disappointments, and difficulties he faces, finally accepting that he must return to England with his dreams unfulfilled. The story that Charles tells is that of a survivor, but one who is seeking a goal that he cannot fulfil.

In an effort to gain a deeper understanding of his grandfather’s experiences, Charles travels to the prairies of Saskatchewan in search of the places and locations Jack had known, attempting to uncover traces and reconnections with the past. Jack’s story is interlaced with episodes in which Charles speculates about what motivated his grandfather and the experiences and encounters that may have influenced his choices and decisions. In the process of his research and writing, Charles uncovers elements and situations that connect in unexpected ways to his grandfather, discovering occurrences, coincidences and conundrums to events and situations that cross-over and interconnect across time.

The story has an autobiographical root: Jack was my grandfather and Charles is a fictionalised version of myself; the few documents and images that Charles is able to access are reproduced within the book. The main body of the story traces the four years that Jack spent in Canada, beginning with the Atlantic crossing in 1922, but also including some details of his time in the army during the first World War and as a military policeman in Ireland during the truce leading to the establishment of the Irish Free State.

Jack’s initial destination was Eastend, Saskatchewan, a small prairie settlement sixty miles from the Montana border. Coincidentally, Eastend was the childhood home of the renowned American writer, teacher, and conservationist Wallace Stegner, who published a detailed portrait of the town during the period just prior to Jack’s arrival in his book “Wolf Willow’ (1955). The Stegner home has been restored and is now the location of a writer’s residency programme. I was writer-in-residence there during the month of August 2024 and was able to incorporate this experience into the novel, recounting Charles’ attempts to uncover further information about his grandfather’s experiences, but also as way of extending the contemporary strand of the story, to trace and seek out new parallels, interconnections, and coincidences to be woven into the narrative.