Gold medal for best fiction from the Canada West region, Independent Publisher Book Awards

Finalist, ForeWord Reviews Book of the Year Awards

A deck of playing cards is discovered, each card inscribed with a fragment of a story. S has kept a playing card face down for 26 years without looking at it.

S studies daily in the threatened Dunsmuir House Library in Vancouver while the one-eyed Dean Truman sells a one-volume encyclopaedia door to door. Deborah possesses an obsidian mirror with mysterious powers. And on the Caribbean island of St Lucia another card lies guarded face down in the mud, preparing for an exotic patenting ceremony.

The structure of the book is disordered – there are several different story lines, being slight variations of each other and of the characters involved. The book includes two joker chapters and an “Inface” (cf. Preface), which is set “in” after the first three chapters.

The reader may be tempted to look at – but should not! – the concealed playing card on the inside of the back cover.

Michael Hetherington has BAs from Queen's University and the University of British Columbia, a MA in International Relations from the London School of Economics, and has travelled widely. He lives in Vancouver with his wife and two children.

Michael Hetherington's profile page

• Winner, best fiction from the Canada West region – Independent Publisher Book Awards
• Short-listed, literary fiction category – ForeWord Reviews Book of the Year Awards