Autorentext

W.O. Mitchell is one of the most recognized Canadian authors of the last century. He was born in Weyburn, Saskatchewan in 1914, and during a varied career he was everything from a Depression hobo to the fiction editor of Maclean's. His best-loved book, Who Has Seen the Wind (1947) is hailed as the quintessential Canadian coming-of-age novel. Other works include Jake and the Kid (1961), The Kite (1962), The Vanishing Point (1973), How I Spent My Summer Holidays (1981), Since Daisy Creek (1984), Ladybug, Ladybug (1988), According to Jake and the Kid (1989), Roses are Difficult Here (1990), For Ark's Sake (1992), An Evening with W.O. Mitchell (1997) and the play The Black Bonspiel of Wullie MacCrimmon (1993). He won the Leacock Medal for Humour for Jake and the Kid and again for According to Jake and the Kid. Mitchell was made an officer in the Order of Canada in 1973 and has been the subject of an NFB documentary entitled W.O. Mitchell: A Novelist in Hiding.

Klappentext

In his best-selling novel, How I Spent My Summer Holidays, W.O. Mitchell tells the story of 12-year-old Hugh's long summer in a small prairie town. When Hugh and his friends uncover a secret cave, they find it occupied by a patient who has recently escaped from the "mental" hospital. Defying the adult world, the boys become involved with a former war hero and current rum-runner, who offers shelter to the runaway. But when passions explode into murder, Hugh leaves his boyhood behind him forever.