Citizens of Light: a Novel

"Sam Shelstad has a funny, lively, engaging, peculiar mind—charming and surprising." —Sheila Heti, bestselling author of Motherhood and Pure Colour

This debut novel set in southern Ontario captures call-centre life, faded tourist attractions, and suburbia with oddball wit and sharp realism.

Colleen Weagle works in a call centre and lives in a bungalow with her mother in a quiet Toronto suburb. In her spare time she writes spec scripts for a CBC riding-school drama (her mother's favourite) and plays an online game set in a resort populated by reindeer. It's a typical life. Except three months ago Colleen's husband Leonard—who led a similarly monotonous life—was found in a bog in the middle of the night, a two hours' drive from home. Dead.

With a flatly optimistic belief in the power of routine, Colleen has been soldiering on, trying not to think too hard about all the unknowns surrounding the death....