Book Launch: Spying on America
Join us in store for the Montreal launch of Spying on America! We will be welcoming Bill Gaston and his son, Vaughn Gaston, for a reading and discussion. This event is free, but space is limited, so please RSVP on TicketSource.
Masks are not required, but will be provided for free at the door.
Please contact us at least a day in advance for elevator access to the store.
Please also note that the street in front of the store is under construction. The store is accessible on foot, but not by car, and parking in the vicinity is consequently limited.
ABOUT THE BOOK
On a June morning in 2022, Bill Gaston drives off the Victoria–Port Angeles ferry in a rented Dodge Charger with his two sons. Born in the USA but “Canadian through and through,” Gaston is on a road trip to Tabor, Iowa, the town founded by his great, great, great-grandparents as the westernmost hub of the Underground Railroad.
The Gastons’ eleven-day trip to Tabor and back takes them up and down and across a swathe of rural red states. Motivated equally by a curiosity to find out what really makes Americans tick and the motto ya gotta stop, the Gastons explore the American west, navigate unmapped dirt roads, eat too many French fries, overnight in clapped-out motels, visit a Buddhist mountain monastery, marvel at spectacular landforms, and enjoy unlikely conversations with real Americans.
Both a sideways glance at contemporary American culture and a mordant yet tender account of the true meaning of ancestry, Spying on America is an unpredictably insightful exploration of family, Canada’s neighbour, and the “American bald ego.”
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Bill Gaston was born in Tacoma, Washington, and grew up in Canada, becoming a Canadian citizen as a teenager to avoid being drafted into the Vietnam War. He has lived and worked, mostly as an itinerant scholar, all across Canada, in Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, Toronto, Vancouver and, finally, Victoria. Gaston is the author of numerous books of fiction, non-fiction, and poetry, including The World, winner of the Ethel Wilson Prize for Fiction; Gargoyles, winner of the Victoria Book Prize and finalist for a Governor General’s Award; Mount Appetite, finalist for the Giller Prize; and the memoir Just Let Me Look at You, finalist for the RBC Taylor Prize. He lives, grows food, and writes, with the writer Dede Crane, on Gabriola Island, in the Salish Sea.