Here we meet William Teufel, a German-Canadian boy who in the summer of 1960 devises a plan that he hopes will distance himself from his German heritage and, unwittingly, brings him face to face with the man whose astonishing act of heroism twenty-one years earlier set the world on its terrifying new path.

Georg Elser, blinded in the A-bombing of London, is shipped to Canada and quarantined in a hospice near Toronto called Mercy House. The war is over, fascism prevails in Europe, and Canada, the Commonwealth holdout in the Americas, suffers on as a client state of the Soviet Union. Göring rushes the German scientific community into developing the atomic bomb, and in August 1944, this devastating new weapon is tested on the English capital. Hermann Göring, masterful political strategist, assumes the Chancellery and quickly signs a non-aggression treaty with the isolationist president Joseph Kennedy that will keep America out of the war that is about to engulf Europe.

But he could never have imagined the terrible consequences that would follow from this act of heroism. In this gripping novel of alternate history, he doesn’t just come close-he succeeds. Come join the discussion of this captivating new novel and the enigmatic individual whose voice it captures.In November 1939, a German anti-fascist named Georg Elser came as close to assassinating Adolf Hitler as anyone ever had. As we read Bethune's wrenching letter home to the daughter he left behind, Bock examines the competing demands of political idealism and personal responsibility. Norman Bethune comes vividly to life, amidst the chaos and destruction of the Japanese invasion of China in the 1930's. In The Communist's Daughter, the legendary Canadian Dr. His first novel, The Ash Garden, was a #1 national bestseller and was shortlisted for the prestigious 2003 IMPAC Dublin Literary Award and the /Books in Canada First Novel Award. His collection Olympia, won the 1998 Canadian Authors' Association Jubilee Award, the inaugural Danuta Gleed Award for best first collection of stories by a Canadian author and the British Betty Trask Award. Currently residing in Guelph Ontario, where he lives with his family, Dennis Bock is one of Canada's most exciting contemporary authors. The event will be held on Thursday, November 2, at 7:00 at the Reading Well Bookstore, 87 Water Street, Charlottetown.ĭennis will be reading from his new novel, The Communist's Daughter, published in 2006 by Harper Collins Canada. The UPEI Department of English and the Prince Edward Island Writers' Guild are very pleased to host Dennis Bock for a public reading and reception.

Ash Garden by Dennis Bock