Facing the Hunter: Reflections on a Misunderstood Way of Life

Hunting has not been a sport for David Adams Richards, but rather a way of life--and one to be celebrated and defended.
The woods have become a part of him. When he first entered them with a gun as a young boy he found "secret places that laid the framework of the template of my life."
He had entered a world of danger, where the struggle for life and death was revealed at its rawest. And one, too, of immense beauty--of wilds, hills and streams. It was home to magnificent animals and to people who respected them and whose wisdom about nature was at least the equal of any city-dweller's.
Facing the Hunter is a memoir, a meditation and a polemic and, above all, shows a writer at the height of his powers, evoking the thrills and wonders of the land along the Mirimichi and Matapedia, the territory that has long informed his novels. Here we discover, in prose of unparalleled passion and beauty, what it has meant to David Adams Richards--the man as much as the novelist.

DAVID ADAMS RICHARDS is one of Canada's pre-eminent writers. His recent novels include Mary Cyr and Principles to Live By, as well as Crimes Against My Brother and Incidents in the Life of Markus Paul, both of which were longlisted for the Scotiabank Giller Prize. Among his other novels, The Lost Highway was shortlisted for the Governor General's Literary Award and nominated for the Scotiabank Giller Prize; The Friends of Meagre Fortune won the Commonwealth Writers' Prize for Best Book; Mercy Among the Children won the Scotiabank Giller Prize and was shortlisted for the Governor General's Literary Award and the Trillium Award. Richards is also the author of the celebrated Miramichi Triology and has written four bestselling books of nonfiction, Lines on the Water, God Is, Facing the Hunter and Hockey Dreams, and most recently the collection of essays Murder. In 2017, David Adams Richards was appointed to the Senate of Canada on the advice of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.