Meet Tyrone Lock: born of farmers' stock; overeducated, underemployed. An inveterate pick-nose and clandestine squeezer of Revels in the supermarket. Disaffected in a way that Adrian Mole would recognize (though as Tyrone takes pains to point out, he's hardly a tortured artist; his BA was in Economics). Inexplicably involved with the lovely, pampered Miss Athena Till.

The young couple are preparing for their first trip abroad: the obligatory horizon-widening sojourn in Europe, the Land of the Forefathers and the Wellspring of Culture.

Except that this is an excursion that Tyrone would do anything to get out of. His horizons are plenty broad, thank you very much, and he'd rather spend his days taking walks with his dog, fly-fishing without a hook, and composing such melodious odes to his native land as: O Beaver Creek, In the Foothills of Alberta's Rocky Mountains, I would sooner have you, Than a bunch of crappy marble fountains.

First published in 1974 and now released for the first time in paperback, Lonesome Hero is a comic classic, the award-winning smartass novel that launched a spectacular writing career.

This new revised edition restores scenes deleted from the original and also features an introduction by the inimitable Mark Anthony Jarman and an afterword by the author, who reflects how glad he is, looking back at his first novel, that Lonesome Hero still manages to embody the ironies of the era, the fact that we often understood perfectly how cartoonish we were. The early '70s was about avoiding work at all costs and trying to live amusingly during all one's waking hours: about how weirdly far we would go to accomplish that.

Fred Stenson has written sixteen books of fiction and non-fiction. Thing Feigned or Imagined: The Craft in Fiction is based on his experience as a writer of fiction and mentor . His cycle of historical novels, The Trade, Lightning and The Great Karoo have won and been nominated for many awards. The Trade (2000) and Lightning (2003) both won the Grant MacEwan Author’s Prize. The Trade also won the Georges Bugnet Award for Fiction and the Edmonton Book Prize, and was nominated for the IMPAC Dublin Award and short-listed for the Giller Prize. The Great Karoo was a finalist for the Governor General’s Award for Fiction in 2008. Stenson has been writer-in-residence at the University of New Brunswick, Grant MacEwan College, Calgary Public Library, the community of Whistler, and many other places. He has directed the Wired Writing Studio at The Banff Centre since 2001 and mentored in its writing studios prior to that. He has been the wit columnist at Alberta Views Magazine for the entire fifteen-year life of the publication. He has also written over 150 films and videos.

Fred Stenson's profile page

It’s a good one, a book that’s got that certain sad, weird feeling you get when you finally get a clear look at the way the world works. —Calgary Herald

A generous glimpse into the mind of a young novelist who has grown to become one of Alberta’s finest. —AlbertaViews