Now Available in paperback: David

Born a slave in 1847, but raised as a free man by the Reverend William King, David has rebelled against his emancipator and his predestined future in the church. He's taken up residence in the nearby town of Chatham, made a living robbing graves, and now presides - in the company of a German ex-prostitute named Loretta - over an illegal after-hours tavern.

These days that final, violent confrontation with Reverend King seems like a lifetime ago. The residents of Chatham know David as a God-cursing, liquor-slinging, money-having man-about-town, famously educated and fabulously eccentric. And he seems to be more-or-less happy...that is, until the death of Reverend King brings his past crashing down upon him.

Inspired by the Elgin Settlement, which by 1852 housed 75 free black families and was studied by Lincoln and Harriet Beecher Stowe, Robertson's novel is a fiery look at one man's quest for knowledge and forgiveness, and a moving portrait of life after the Underground Railroad. Find out more right here.

Ray Robertson is the Jerry Lee Lewis of North American Letters.

—Chuck Kinder (author of Honeymooners and The Last Mountain Dancer)

A graduate of the University of Toronto with High Distinction with a B.A. in philosophy and an M.F.A. in creative writing from Southwest Texas State University, Ray Robertson is the author of six novels, two books of essays, and is a contributing book reviewer to the Globe and Mail.

Clever, word-drunk, and falling-down funny...Robertson is a moral writer and a bitingly intelligent one, a man who writes with penetrating insight of what needs to be written about: beauty, truth and goodness.

—Globe and Mail

One of Canada's finest novelists.

—Ottawa Express