Terence M. Green is the author of eight books (seven novels and a short story collection); the recipient of a total of nine Canada Council, Ontario Arts Council, and Toronto Arts Council grants for fiction writing; a two-time World Fantasy Award finalist; and a five-time Prix Aurora Award finalist. His work has been translated into French, Italian, Danish, Polish, and Portuguese. He is profiled in Contemporary Authors, The Oxford Companion to Canadian Literature, Canadian Who's Who, The Dictionary of Literary Biography, and Books in Canada. He has been praised in the New York Times, the San Francisco Chronicle, the Globe and Mail, the Toronto Star, the Ottawa Citizen, and the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. His novel Shadow of Ashland (more than a quarter of a million printed) was selected as a Top 3 Fiction Pick of the Year by the Edmonton Journal in 1997, and as The Book You Have to Read by Entertainment Weekly in 2003. He currently teaches creative writing at Western University, in London, Ontario.

Shadow of Ashland by Terence M. Green

"Things have to be settled, or they never go away."

Only weeks before she dies in March, 1984, Leo Nolan's mother shows her son a rose she says was just given to her by her brother, Jack, who disappeared 50 years earlier. After her death, letters from Jack begin to arrive at the family home. They are postmarked 1934. The final one is from Ashland, Kentucky.

Leo heads to Ashland, to track down the source of the letters…. And to find out why they are arriving now, after 50 years.

Time shifts. Time runs underground, then surfaces. It is 1934, and Leo experiences the Great Depression and the ghosts of the past as no one has in 50 years, in Ashland, where dreams die and are born again.

 

REVIEWS

  • "A love story, time travel epic, ghost story, labor history, road novel and a bank heist, all with the added touch of Steinbeckian metaphysics. For me it was the surprise of the year, a rich evocation of 1934 small-town Kentucky that winds up completely unpredictable."

    – The Edmonton Journal, “Top Fiction Pick of the Year
  • "Green has devised a truly mysterious mystery, he writes with a real and rare sympathy for his characters."

    – The Atlanta Constitution
  • "A jewel of a novel"

    – Booklist
  • "A deceptive novel, one that begins and ends simply yet is filled with extraordinary events…. SHADOW OF ASHLAND succeeds."

    – The New York Times
 

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