Heather Robinson has made Prime Minister William Lyon Mackenzie King's bizarre and paradoxical psyche the mainspring of a historical novel of consummate invention, audacity and wit.
Set against the turbulent background of World War I and Canada's struggle to achieve political maturity, Willie: A Romance hurls Mackenzie King into not only a love affair but a love triangle. A unique and absorbing panorama of wartime Canada and wartime Ottawa, official and unofficial, the novel is richly peopled with historical characters: King, Talbot Papineau, Sir Wilifrid and Lady Laurier, Lord Beaverbrook, John D. Rockefller Jr., among others.
Sympathetic and fascinating, Willie: A Romance delves deeply into the secret life of Mackenzie King, exposing an extraordinary mixture of buffoonery and cunning, paranoia and ambition, puritanism and prurience.

HEATHER ROBERTSON is one of Canada's most accomplished and acclaimed authors. Her many books include Reservations Are for Indians, Grass Roots, A Terrible Beauty and Willie: A Romance. Born in Winnipeg, she has long lived in Toronto.

Heather Robertson's profile page

• Winner, Books in Canada First Novel Award

"Heather Robertson has set herself a difficult and delicate task and has pulled it off with a wonderful mixture of bold irreverence and unabashed love."

Timothy Findley