About
the Book
LordÕs
Day Sweater follows two generations of brothers in a mixed English/French
family at the turn of the 20th century. The Doyles are atypical of
the two Canadian solitudes and the perceived roles of the time. The characters
are roguish, free-thinking, outspoken and jovial as they experience monumental
world and local events as active witnesses, and not mere spectators.
The
era holds many parallels to our own time, as citizens coped with great advances
in technology, commerce, culture and industry, all the while focusing on their
main struggle; keeping their families fed and joyful. The book takes a modern
and ironic look at this time in history and the lives of the people who lived
it.
The
story takes place in Arnprior, Ottawa, Montreal and war-torn Flanders. The
father and main protagonist, Buddy Doyle, is a blue-talking, card-cheating,
beer-brewing, good-loving atheist. His wife, Marie, is a French Catholic
suffragist, modern woman, great foil to her husband, bane of the Priest, and
anchor for the clan. BuddyÕs brother Glenn is the tragic figure. Orphaned at 16
years, heÕs left in the care of his older brother and family.
The
story begins in 1900, days after the birth of BuddyÕs second son. After seven
years of life on the farm, we move to the city of Ottawa and watch the growth
of our capital through the mischievous antics of BuddyÕs growing sons, George
and Samuel. Snowball fights and hockey games, canoe trips, girl trouble and
other boyish hijinks figure prominently in these chapters.
By
1914 the boys are young men, too young to fight, but raging with enthusiasm.
Uncle Glenn is the first to heed the call to duty while the older son, George,
attends McGill University through the winter of 1914. We follow the early
actions of the Canadian Expeditionary Force through GlennÕs eyes, including the
second battle of Ypres. George becomes a junior officer in late 1915 after a
young love gone bad, and arrives in France in May 1916.
The
book explores the impact of war on the battlefield and on the home front. We
watch MarieÕs crisis of faith caused by the strain of war and her own
questioning nature. By 1917, Uncle Glenn is wounded in battle and returns home
to a different world, a bitter, alcoholic amputee. Buddy dies suddenly in 1918,
a victim of the Spanish Flu Epidemic. Glenn dies shortly thereafter, burning
the farmhouse down around him. Marie gives birth at 39 to the daughter sheÕs
always yearned for. The book ends with her and her children trying to piece
their shattered lives back together.
About
the Author
IÕm
Dan LaRocque, an author and songwriter presently living in Parksville on
Vancouver Island with my wife and two sons, aged 9 and 6.
I
was involved in the Vancouver independent music scene through the 90Õs, as a
guitarist with rock band Sick Sick Yeah, as a regular music columnist with
Exclaim magazine and as a radio host and music director with CFRO Co-Op radio,
enjoying an average of three hours on air every week.
I
was born and raised in Ottawa, with stops in Vancouver and Northern
Saskatchewan
As
a songwriter, IÕm best known for my work with Sick Sick Yeah, as well as solo
projects Larry and Parksville Rancher. My song Wrestle With Me Xena was
featured in a segment with Lucy Lawless on the popular British TV show V Graham
Norton. My tribute to Coronation StreetÕs greatest anti-hero, The Ballad of Les
Battersby received much radio play overseas, and is frequently sung at
Manchester soccer matches. Canadian historical ballads and anthems include The
Mad Trapper from Rat River, The Battle Hymn of the Dominion and Cascadia,
Cascadia. My experience as a songwriter gives my work a lyrical style, concise
and metric.
The
birth of my first son forced me to limit my involvement in the creative arts,
but I managed to contribute a number of songs and essays for CBC Radio during
the demanding years of early childhood. I also produced and released the
anti-Gordon Campbell compilation CD ÔCitizens RuleÕ in time for the last
provincial election in 2005. IÕve published my bank-b-gone.com website since
1998, and most of my songs, videos and essays are available there.
I
have a broad and odious base of experience from which to draw as an author,
having lived as a farmer, a mover, a musician, a hitchhiker, a father, a
beermaker, hockey player, early web denizen, lover, spurned and otherwise,
gardener, delinquent.
My
literary heroes include Farley Mowat, Mordecai Richler, Kurt Vonnegut, Douglas
Adams and Tom Robbins. Musical influences Tom Waits, Elvis Costello, Bob Dylan.
Modern favorites, Death Cab for Cutie, Weakerthans, Stars, Bloc Party.
IÕm
currently working on my next project, entitled Screw The Future, IÕve Got Mine
– The Generation That Ate The World. ItÕs a narrative fiction about the
baby boom generation, once eager to change the world, but instead, through
complicity and complacency, power and greed, has led us to the brink of
extinction. It has a similar style to LordÕs Day Sweater in the way it follows
a number of characters through history and popular culture. Exploring this era
in time will prove enjoyable and I expect the theme to be controversial and
mildly offensive to a vast number of the Canadian public.
Dan
LaRocque