A National Bestseller and a Globe and Mail Best Book of the Year

One of the most powerful, gripping works of fiction to come out of Canada, Red Dog, Red Dog is Patrick Lane’s virtuoso debut novel.

An epic novel of unrequited dreams and forestalled lives, Red Dog, Red Dog is set in the mid-1950s, in a small town in the interior of B.C. in the unnamed Okanagan Valley. The novel focuses on the Stark family, centring on brothers Eddy and Tom, who are bound together by family loyalty and inarticulate love.

There is Tom and Eddy’s father, Elmer Stark, a violent man with a troubled past, and Lillian, who married as a girl to escape life on the farm with her widowed mother, and now retreats into her own isolation. Unrepentant, bitter, older brother Eddy speeds freely along, his desperate path fuelled by drugs and weapons, while Tom, a loner, attempts to conceal their secrets and protect what remains of the family. Eventually, an unspeakable crime causes him to come face to face with something traumatic that has lain hidden in him since he was a boy. Narrated in part by one of the dead infant daughters Elmer has buried, the story unfolds gradually, as it weaves in family stories that reach back to the depression days and the harsh life of settlers in the 1880s West.

This is also a novel about a small community of people, about complicated loyalties, about betrayals and shifts of power. Filled with moments of harrowing violence and breathtaking description, of shattering truths and deep humanity, Red Dog, Red Dog is about the legacies of the past and the possibilities of forgiveness and redemption. With this astonishing novel, one of Canada’s best poets propels himself into the forefront of our finest novelists.

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NOMINEE 2008 - Scotiabank Giller Prize
NOMINEE 2008 - Rogers Writers' Trust Fiction Prize
FINALIST 2009 - BC Book Prize's Ethel Wilson Fiction Prize
FINALIST 2008 - Amazon.ca/Books in Canada First Novel Award

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“Patrick Lane’s Red Dog, Red Dog is a tale of blood, loyalty and redemption. The novel centers on Eddy and Tom Stark, two brothers struggling with their hardscrabble inheritance in the Okanagan Valley. Theirs is a fiercely unforgiving world, and, for the reader, an unforgettable one. The strength of Lane’s perfectly cadenced prose may bring to mind Faulkner, Cormac McCarthy and, inevitably, The Bible. There is a deep wisdom in this book and I cannot recommend it highly enough.”
— Richard Bachman, A Different Drummer Books

“Lane’s exquisite craftsmanship is on display… particularly his unerring instinct for images that wound and enlighten in equal measure.”
— Globe and Mail

“The violence and anger [are] matched only by the sublime radiance of the prose…. While the novel is of a time and place, its significance is universal.”
— Victoria Times Colonist

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"The scenery is beautifully described as befitting a poet of his stature."
- Jennifer W., Ontario

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Patrick Lane has received numerous awards for his writing, including the Governor General’s Award for Poetry. His acclaimed memoir, There Is a Season, won the Lieutenant Governor’s Award for Literary Excellence and the inaugural British Columbia Award for Canadian Non-fiction. Lane lives near Victoria, B.C. Red Dog, Red Dog is his debut novel.

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