Tom Brackett has created the perfect world for himself: he has a good job, a perpetually supportive wife, two kids, a mini-van, and even a golden retriever.

But then, his mental instability causes him to commit a terrifying act of violence.

Tom's story, which is at once tragic and hopeful, shows how quickly familiar structures can crumble and raises the question of how we can possibly prepare ourselves for the loss of everything we hold dear. It dramatizes a man's struggle to maintain control over his own life under horrific circumstances. Though offering no solution, its message is a positive one: that the struggle is worth the effort.

Ian Colford is a fiction writer living in Halifax, Nova Scotia. His stories, reviews, and commentary have appeared in Canadian literary publications from coast to coast and in journals published online. From 1995 to 1998 he was editor of the literary journal Pottersfield Portfolio, and from 1994 to 2000 served on the executive board of the Writers’ Federation of Nova Scotia. In 1998 he selected and edited a collection of stories by Maritime writers called Water Studies. Written over eight years, The Crimes of Hector Tomás was completed in 2010 with the help of two Canada Council grants and residencies at the Hawthornden Castle International Retreat for Writers and Yaddo, the artists’ colony in Saratoga Springs, New York. Evidence, his first collection of short fiction, was published in 2008 by Porcupine’s Quill.

Ian Colford's profile page

• Short-listed, Alberta Book Design Award

"Perfect World is a corruscating examination of a mind riven by illness and the traumatic ripple effects that can have on one man and those closest to him. The book's power resides precisely in its brevity, which provides a focus and an immediacy that is striking and emotionally devastating." -- Steven W. Beattie, Quill and Quire

"[A] carefully written, sometimes painful tour through one man's trauma and resilience, his greatest falls and ultimately, his acceptance of a difficult reality. And it is wholly worthy of applause." -- Winnipeg Review

"A voyage through sickness and the mysteries of the human condition, written with skill and care. A haunting study in empathy."-- Michelle Butler Hallett

" Perfect World is unflinching in its presentation of a mind slowly unraveling. Perceptively charting one man's lonely struggle against an inexorable foe, Ian Colford captures the stark complexities of mental illness like few others. At times brutal yet always deeply compassionate, Perfect World is a wonder." -- Corey Redekop

"Perfect World is a corruscating examination of a mind riven by illness and the traumatic ripple effects that can have on one man and those closest to him. The book's power resides precisely in its brevity, which provides a focus and an immediacy that is striking and emotionally devastating." — Steven W. Beattie, Quill and Quire

"[A] carefully written, sometimes painful tour through one man's trauma and resilience, his greatest falls and ultimately, his acceptance of a difficult reality. And it is wholly worthy of applause." — Winnipeg Review

"A voyage through sickness and the mysteries of the human condition, written with skill and care. A haunting study in empathy."? Michelle Butler Hallett

" Perfect World is unflinching in its presentation of a mind slowly unraveling. Perceptively charting one man's lonely struggle against an inexorable foe, Ian Colford captures the stark complexities of mental illness like few others. At times brutal yet always deeply compassionate, Perfect World is a wonder." — Corey Redekop