About this ebook
High on a cliff above a pulp-mill town on Vancouver Island, sixteen-year-old Bill MacAvoy and his friends lead cloistered lives while other boys their age run free. it may be the fall of 1982, but inside the walls of their Benedictine seminary they inhabit a medieval world steeped in ritual and discipline–a place where blackrobed monks move like shadows between doubt and faith.
Isolated from the outside, Bill and his friends develop a unique and often hilarious culture. Schooled in the virtues of sacrifice and service, they instead learn to challenge, resist, and wield power over one another’s lives.
On the road to certain expulsion, Bill discovers two secrets: one concerns Brother Thomas, the monk who watches his every move; the other involves his best friend, Jon. In Bill’s hands these secrets prove dangerous weapons. Handled carelessly, they trigger an event that threatens to haunt him for the rest of his life.
About the author
Brian Payton was born in the United States and moved to Canada at the age of sixteen. He is the author of two nonfiction books, Long Beach, Clayoquot and Beyond and Cowboy, and is a contributor to the acclaimed anthology Literary Trips 2: Following in the Footsteps of Fame. His work has appeared in the New York Times, the Chicago Tribune, the Boston Globe, and Toronto's Globe and Mail.
In 2001 he was awarded the Lowell Thomas Silver Award for best North American travel essay. He lives in Vancouver British Columbia.
