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Young Kevin O'Brien is caught between heaven and hell, torn between the tenderness of his young, adulterous mother and the brutality of his work-gnarled, drunken father. Kevin's world is unrelenting: bone-crushing poverty, bullying, his first adolescent yearnings, and the fire of sin. Yet, in Kevin's imagination, there is hope.
The Wanton Troopers, Alden Nowlan's first novel, was published after his death in 1983. This Reader's Guide edition includes the final page omitted from the original edition and restores many of Nowlan's original phrases. It also features a poignant afterword by David Adams Richards, an extended biographical note by Nowlan scholar Patrick Toner, and excerpts from an interview by Jon Pederson conducted a year before Nowlan's death for the celebrated NFB film,
Alden Nowlan: An Introduction.
About the author
Born in Hants Co., Nova Scotia, in 1933, Alden Nowlan moved to Hartland, New Brunswick, when he was nineteen, and worked on the
Hartland Observer as reporter, editor, and general facilitator until he went to Saint John (and the
Telegraph Journal) in 1963. In 1968 he was invited to take up the position of Writer-in-Residence at the University of New Brunswick in Fredericton. Alden Nowlan died on June 27th, 1983.
