Facing the Hunter

David Adams Richards takes us behind his gun and into the Canadian forest for his most powerful work of non-fiction yet.
In his brilliant non-fiction, David Adams Richards - first and foremost one of Canada's greatest and best-beloved novelists - has been writing a kind of memoir by other means. Like his previous titles Lines On Water, about his pursuit of angling, and Hockey Dreams, about the game his disabled body prevented him from playing, Facing the Hunter explores the meaning of a sport and the way in which it touches lives, not least that of the author. And as with God Is, his recent book about his faith, it is also an impassioned defence of a set of values and a way of life that Richards believes are under attack.
Lovers of David Adams Richards' novels will be fascinated and enlightened to note the interplay between his former life as a keen hunter - he hunts less and less these days, as he explains - and the narratives and characters of his fiction. But this is also a perfect starting point for anyone coming new to Richards. The storytelling in this book, the evocation of the Canadian wild and those who venture into it, the sheer power of the prose, show a great writer at the height of his powers.

DAVID ADAMS RICHARDS has received numerous awards and prizes throughout his career, and is one of the few writers in the history of the Governor General's Award to win in the categories of both fiction (Nights Below Station Street) and non-fiction (Lines on the Water). Mercy Among the Children won the Giller Prize in 2000 and was shortlisted for the Governor General's Literary Award and the Trillium Award; it was a Canada Reads pick in 2009. The Friends of Meager Fortune (2006) won the Commonwealth Writers' Prize for Best Book (Canada and Caribbean). His most recent books are God Is (2009) and the novel Incidents in the life of Markus Paul (2011).