The Riveter is one of our amazing February giveaways, running until the end of the month. 

Find your chance to win and everything else we have on offer on our Giveaways Page.  

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The Second World War is the most written-about war in human history. It was a global cataclysm of such immensity that hundreds of thousands of books have been launched in its wake. Nonetheless, 80 years on, new stories of the Second World War continue to emerge. My debut novel, The Riveter, is one such story.

The Riveter is about a Chinese Canadian who serves in the 1st Canadian Parachute Battalion in Europe in hopes of winning citizenship and the franchise and marrying the woman he loves. Inspired in part by Richard Mar, the only Chinese Canadian to serve in the famed airborne infantry unit, The Riveter explores what one man must sacrifice to belong to the only country he has ever called home. 

Here are nine other Canadian works of fiction that dramatize the Second World War at home and abroad:

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The Water Beetles, by Michael Kaan

 For many, World War II began with the invasion of Poland in 1939. For others, though, the war began much earlier in 1931, when Japan invaded Manchuria. By 1941, Japan had reached the British crown colony of Hong Kong. This forms the dramatic backdrop of Michael Kaan’s award-winning first novel. Told in first person by a narrator recalling his childhood, The Water Beetles bears witness to the hardships and atrocities of the Second Sino-Japanese War.

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Execution, by Colin McDougall

Colin McDougall was an officer with Princess Patricia’s Canadian Light Infantry, which makes Execution that rare thing: a Canadian World War II novel written by someone who was there. Through a kaleidoscopic point of view and rugged midcentury prose, the novel follows Canadian soldiers in Italy in 1943 who are forced to execute friend and foe alike, including one of their own. Winner of the Governor General’s Award, Execution was McDougall’s only novel.

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Obasan, by Joy Kogawa

Possibly the most widely taught Canadian novel, Obasan is the ur-novel of Japanese Canadian incarceration during the Second World War. Upon her uncle’s death, Naomi Nakane visits her aunt or obasan, which triggers painful memories of her childhood experiences in Canada during the war. As a writer-in-residence at Historic Joy Kogawa House in Vancouver, I had the honour of completing a draft of The Riveter at the desk where Kogawa wrote Obasan.

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"Stones,” by Timothy Findley

“Stones” is the title story of Timothy Findley’s second short story collection. Before the war, the Max family lives happily on the west side of Yonge Street. After the war, the narrator’s father is tormented by his failures at Dieppe—described as Canada’s “Waterloo.” He goes mad from guilt and shame, destroying his family in the process. Nonetheless, years later, the narrator agrees to scatter his father’s ashes in France. I first read this story in high school and have never forgotten it.

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The Jade Peony and All That Matters, by Wayson Choy

Wayson Choy is the great chronicler of childhood and adolescence in Vancouver’s Chinatown in the 1930’s and 40’s, and both of his novels, The Jade Peony and its sequel, All That Matters, capture important aspects of war on the home front. For instance, through a clandestine affair between Meiying and her Japanese boyfriend, The Jade Peony explores tensions between the Chinese and Japanese communities in Vancouver during the Second World War.

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The Electrical Field, by Kerri Sakamoto

Any monumental subject deserves more than one treatment, and that is certainly true of Japanese Canadian incarceration. Like Obasan, The Electrical Field is set in the 1970s and begins with unexpected death—in this case, the double murder of a beautiful woman named Chisako and her lover. For Miss Saito, Chisako’s neighbour, the event sets off a sometimes unreliable cascade of memories that suggests how the trauma of incarceration continues to reverberate decades later.

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Half-Blood Blues, by Esi Edugyan

In 1939, Hieronymous Falk, a prodigious Afro-German trumpeter, flees racial persecution in Berlin, only to be apprehended in Paris after France falls to the Nazis. Half a century later, his former African American bandmates, Sid Griffiths and Chip Jones, make a pilgrimage to Berlin, where they face a personal reckoning. Narrated by Sid in earthy vernacular, Esi Edugyan’s Giller Prize-winning novel is a unique confluence of music, war, and Black experience.

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The English Patient, by Michael Ondaatje

No list of Canadian World War II fiction would be complete without The English Patient, arguably the most celebrated novel our country has ever produced. In the waning days of the war, four people converge upon an abandoned villa in Italy, where a badly burned patient—ostensibly English—unravels his mysterious past. In the hands of Michael Ondaatje, scenes of bomb disposal become some of the most dramatic and harrowing depictions of war you’ll ever read.

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Learn more about The Riveter: 

A cross-cultural love story set against the dramatic backdrop of the Allied invasion of Europe in WWII.

Vancouver, 1942. Josiah Chang arrives in the bustling city ready to serve his country in the war against fascism, but Chinese Canadians are barred from joining the army out of fear they might expect citizenship in return. So, Josiah heads to the shipyard to find work as a riveter, fastening together the ribs and steel plates of Victory ships.

One night, Josiah spots Poppy singing at a navy club. Despite their different backgrounds, they fall for each other instantly and begin a starry-eyed romance that lasts until the harsh reality of their situation is made clear. Determined to prove himself, Josiah takes a train to Toronto where he’s finally given the chance to enlist. After volunteering for the 1st Canadian Parachute Battalion and jumping into Normandy on D-Day, he must fight through the battlefields of Europe to make it back to the woman he loves.

By turns harrowing and exhilarating, The Riveter explores what one man must sacrifice to belong to the only country he has ever called home.