The Book of Gronsky
by Bill Engleson

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Gilbert Gronsky is at it again. The neophyte author of The Life of Gronsky has returned to the world of Danny Hawkins, a Vancouver Island-based P.I. whose midcentury sleuthing proves far more palatable than the grind of post-pandemic self-promotion. Unfortunately, Gronsky feels obliged to market his first book — a task that takes him from a Saturday afternoon launch at the local library to a midwinter writers’ festival on Ostrich Island. As the larger world devolves into war and climate disaster, attending such an event feels a bit like putting his head in the sand, but Gronsky isn’t fated to engage in the activist shenanigans of younger authors like the doggedly dedicated poet, Tree Leaf. He’s got a published book to promote and a new book to write — a novel/memoir about a multitude of mysteries in and around Nanaimo, BC in the 50s and early 60s including goings-on connected to that prodigious mystic/charlatan, Brother Xll. Will Gronsky finish his second manuscript, or is he destined to be a one-book wonder? And, worryingly, is that even a thing?

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“An amusing glimpse into the nerve-wracking business of books. The mystery in this “story within a story” mixes BC locations and familiar political figures, all scented with sea breezes, pulp mills, and blackberries in sunshine.” - Merrilee Robson, Author of short crime fiction and the novel, Murder is Uncooperative “Captures some of the flavour of the Hub City in the early 1960's. Shack Island and Pipers Lagoon appear briefly towards the end of The Book of Gronsky and add to the exciting story line of Gronsky's novel within a novel, Night Wounds." - Ruth English Matson, Author, Shack Island : A Nanaimo Riddle Nae Herring, Nae Fish “Back by popular demand, rookie writer Gil Gronsky returns to pen another book while doing his best to promote his first...and with a cast of quirky characters you won’t soon forget. Bravo!“ - Terry Fallis, two-time winner of the Stephen Leacock Medal for Humour

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Bill Engleson is a retired child protection social worker with a propensity for pickleball and political palaver. Actively involved in his local writing community, he has written three other books—Like a Child to Home, Confessions of an Inadvertently Gentrifying Soul, and The Life of Gronsky—as well as poetry, reviews, and short fiction including his contribution, Roadside Reunion, in the recently released Tidewater Press anthology, Not the Same Road Out — Trans Canada Stories. He lives on Denman Island, BC, with his life partner, Sharon, and no pets currently. That could change of course — the pets part.

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Bill Engleson