{"product_id":"come-back-isbn-9780345808868","title":"Come Back","description":"\u003cb\u003eFrom a 2-time winner of the Governor General's Literary Award, an intense novel of loss, memory and the limitless nature of family love.\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eHal Wiens, a retired professor, is mourning the sudden death of his loving wife, Yo. To get through each day, he relies on the bare comfort of routine and regular phone calls to his children Dennis and Miriam, who live in distant cities with their families. One snowy April morning, while drinking coffee with his Dené friend Owl in south-side Edmonton, he sees a tall man in an orange downfill jacket walk past on the sidewalk. The jacket, the posture, the head and hair are unmistakable: it's his beloved oldest son, Gabriel. But it can't be—Gabriel killed himself 25 years ago.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThe sighting throws Hal's inert life into tumult. While trying to track down the man, he is irresistibly compelled to revisit the diaries, journals and pictures Gabe left behind, to unfold the mystery of his son's death. Through Gabe's own eyes we begin to understand the covert sensibilities that corroded the hope and light his family knew in him. As he becomes absorbed in his son's life, lost on a tide of \"relentless memory,\" Hal's grief—and guilt—is portrayed with a stunning immediacy, drawing us into a powerful emotional and spiritual journey.\u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003e\u003cbr\u003eCome Back\u003c\/i\u003e is a rare and beautiful novel about the humanity of living and dying, a lyrical masterwork from one of our most treasured writers.\u003cb\u003e#1 BESTSELLER (McNally Robinson)\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \u003cb\u003eFinalist for the Alberta Readers’ Choice Awards\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \u003cb\u003eWinner of the Robert Kroetsch City of Edmonton Book Prize\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \u003cb\u003eWinner of the Alberta Literary Awards—Georges Bugnet Award for Fiction\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"Powerful, at times lyrical, \u003ci\u003eCome Back\u003c\/i\u003e gives voice to the depth of familial love and the strength of the human desire for answers in the face of inconsolable loss.\" \u003cbr\u003e—\u003ci\u003eWinnipeg Free Press\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"\u003ci\u003eCome Back\u003c\/i\u003e lingers in the reader's mind and heart as a powerful and deeply felt spiritual biography.\" \u003cbr\u003e—\u003ci\u003eWaterloo Regional Record\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"A very real portrait of a grief-stricken father trying to piece together his son from unreliable scraps of information.\"\u003ci\u003e \u003cbr\u003e—Edmonton Journal\u003cbr\u003e \u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"\u003ci\u003eCome Back\u003c\/i\u003e's tone is kind, and maintains an ethic of honesty. Even its starkest passages are underwritten with a kind of grave acceptance. . . . But Wiebe's principal achievement in \u003ci\u003eCome Back \u003c\/i\u003eis his avoidance of consolation. There is no cure for the pain of premature loss. Longing for the missing loved one will tug at the heart, call that command in perpetuity. Wiebe makes us attend to the beauty of the call.\" \u003cbr\u003e—\u003ci\u003eThe Globe and Mail\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e\"Rudy Wiebe’s new novel, \u003ci\u003eCome Back,\u003c\/i\u003e succeeds in doing a rare thing—articulating grief in its full weight and depth while also buoying it with love. . . . [The narrative voice] feels, in fact, like a song, a hymn even, lyrical, gripping and heartbreaking—the kind of song that stops you on the spot and reaches into the chasm.\" \u003cbr\u003e—\u003ci\u003e\u003ci\u003eAlberta Views\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"The writing [of \u003ci\u003eCome Back\u003c\/i\u003e] is elegiac in tone and the novel, as is to be expected from Wiebe, is stylistically experimental and challenging.\" \u003cbr\u003e—\u003ci\u003eQuill \u0026amp; Quire\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"[An] emotionally harrowing tale.\" \u003cbr\u003e—\u003ci\u003eToronto Star\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"This novel is for anyone who contemplates not only how terrible things happen in this world, but why love cannot always save people. . . . Wiebe has used the eloquence of words as a response to unanswered questions of loss and tragedy.\" \u003cbr\u003e—\u003ci\u003eMennonite Life\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cp\u003eRUDY WIEBE's novels, stories and essays stand at the forefront of Canadian literature. He is an Officer of the Order of Canada. He has won the Governor General's Literary Award for Fiction twice, for \u003ci\u003eThe Temptations of Big Bear \u003c\/i\u003eand for \u003ci\u003eA Discovery of Strangers\u003c\/i\u003e. He is also the co-author of \u003ci\u003eStolen Life\u003c\/i\u003e, which won the Viacom Canada Writers' Trust Non-Fiction Prize, the Saskatchewan Book Award for Non-Fiction and the Alberta Book Award, and was shortlisted for the Governor General's Literary Award for Non-Fiction. His memoir, \u003ci\u003eOf This Earth\u003c\/i\u003e, won the Charles Taylor Prize for Literary Non-Fiction and was a national bestseller.\u003c\/p\u003eA Novel","brand":"Vintage Canada","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":46300773089509,"sku":"NP9780345808868","price":17.95,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1842\/7735\/files\/9780345808868.jpg?v=1767723944","url":"https:\/\/k12savings.com\/products\/come-back-isbn-9780345808868","provider":"K12savings","version":"1.0","type":"link"}