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Fiction Literary

Swimming with Horses

by (author) Oakland Ross

Publisher
Dundurn Press
Initial publish date
Feb 2019
Category
Literary, International Mystery & Crime, Crime
  • Paperback / softback

    ISBN
    9781459743540
    Publish Date
    Feb 2019
    List Price
    $20.99
  • eBook

    ISBN
    9781459743564
    Publish Date
    Feb 2019
    List Price
    $9.99
  • Downloadable audio file

    ISBN
    9781459747913
    Publish Date
    Sep 2020
    List Price
    $35.99

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Description

An unlikely friendship between a Canadian teenager and a South African girl sparks a journey to untangle an unsolved murder.

Eighteen-year-old Hilary Anson’s startling good looks and wanton ways scandalize the denizens of sleepy Kelso County, but young Sam Mitchell is instantly enthralled by his new friend. Over one sun-soaked summer, Hilary vastly improves Sam’s equestrian skills, while dropping inscrutable details about her past in apartheid-era South Africa. Mysteries mount until Hilary vanishes, leaving at least one unsolved murder in her wake. Many years and two failed marriages later, Sam sets out for South Africa, determined to crack the enigma of Hilary Anson. In doing so, he finds himself confronting a shocking secret of his own.

About the author

OAKLAND ROSS is the author of the novel The Dark Virgin, the travel memoir A Fire on the Mountains, and Guerrilla Beach, a collection of short stories that was shortlisted for the Trillium Book Award. He is a features writer for the Toronto Star and spent several years as the Star’s Middle East correspondent. He previously lived in Zimbabwe and Mexico City as The Globe and Mail’s Africa and Latin America correspondent. Ross is the winner of two National Newspaper Awards, a National Magazine Award for fiction and the Roland Michener Award for Meritorious Public Service in Journalism. He lives in Toronto.

Oakland Ross' profile page

Awards

  • Commended, Dewey Divas and the Dudes Winter 2019 Pick

Excerpt: Swimming with Horses (by (author) Oakland Ross)

Prologue

They found Quinton Vasco’s body only a day after he went missing. Still clad in a black business suit, his corpse turned up amid a large field of alfalfa grass, a couple of hundred yards north of Number Four Sideroad in Kelso County. The site was not far from a trail that local teens had used in former days as a sort of lovers’ lane.

By this time, the police had discovered Vasco’s abandoned BMW nearby. It seemed he had walked from the vehicle into the field, entering by means of the padlocked gates; it was determined he had a key. He then proceeded on foot to the site of his death, evidently accompanied by a second person, his killer. There was no sign of a struggle.

Some said it was fitting that Vasco owned the property where he was murdered, although I can’t imagine what difference that would make, either to him or to anyone else, unless it was for the view. The view was stunning. Still, it all came to the same thing in the end. The man was dead, shot twice in the side of the head from very close range — this, according to the police report. The police also said there was something odd about the bullets that killed him. Their calibre — nine millimetres by eighteen millimetres — was pretty unusual, albeit not unknown. That summer, the Evanton detachment of the Ontario Provincial Police had received several baffling reports of local livestock being shot while grazing, invariably with bullets of this same unfamiliar configuration. Possibly, the killer had been getting in some target practice.

Many people would later insist that Vasco’s death must have been part of some deadly international plot, rife with intrigue and espionage. He was the inventor, after all, of the GC-45 howitzer, a massive cannon that was eventually sold to the white supremacist government in South Africa. But the actual verdict proved to be far more mundane. Kelso was a quiet region, you see, with little crime and few troublemakers. When acts of malfeasance did take place, suspicion tended to round pretty quickly upon a select group of known delinquents, a short list that included a certain Bruce Gruber. He was a grade eight dropout who worked as an apprentice mechanic at Weintrub’s Garage over in Hatton. He had a mean temper and had run afoul of the law more than once. He was not noted for his keen intellect.

What was more, Bruce Gruber confessed his guilt almost at once, and he stuck to his tale like a dog. He insisted that he shot Quinton Vasco “because I hated him,” which made sense if you know anything about human nature at all. It was said that Gruber acted in a jealous rage, which seemed on the surface to be entirely plausible.

All of this and more came out in the news and kept everyone jabbering for weeks. A murder? In Kelso County? Nothing like it had ever happened before. True, rumours would begin to spread toward the end of that summer about an alleged rape, a terrible business said to have involved that nice young Odegaard girl. Leslie was her name. For my part, I happen to have a fair idea of what was done to Leslie on that night, even if few others do. I may even have saved her from suffering worse harm. For almost everyone else, the episode was a matter of hearsay and conjecture — unproven and easily forgotten. Besides, the Odegaards quickly sold their store in Hatton and set out for parts unknown. People stopped talking about them before very long. I don’t believe that anyone was ever punished for the assault on that poor child, or not officially. Still, some higher form of justice may have been at work because, one way or another, Bruce Gruber went to jail.

As for the object of Bruce’s seemingly unrequited passion, she absconded, too. The South African girl, they called her. Colonel Barker drove her to the airport on the day that followed Quinton Vasco’s death, even before the man’s body was found. She left no message or, anyway, none for me. She just marched aboard an airplane and disappeared. Good riddance, everyone said. Her departure merely confirmed what they had believed all along.

That girl was trouble.

And she was. I know she was. I know that better than anyone.

Editorial Reviews

Is it possible for a novel to be both a Bildungsroman about a sensitive Canadian teenager who loves horses and a noirish thriller about apartheid-era South Africa? Somehow, yes.

Globe and Mail

Set against a bridle-creakingly realistic background of horsemanship, and fueled by the dual mystery of the circumstances surrounding Hilary’s departure from South Africa, and then Canada, this is an intriguing coming-of-age novel.

Booklist

Author Oakland Ross provides an intriguing conclusion … leaving both character and reader satisfied.

Quill & Quire

The book is essentially a murder mystery, but it is also an exquisite literary achievement.

Foreword Reviews

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