Buy David today!


David

David


Order from an online bookseller:

Amazon.ca


David is also available at your local bookstore -- remember to support independent booksellers! They are the backbone of our literary culture. To find a store near you in Canada, please visit the Canadian Booksellers Association website.


"God and whiskey have got me where I am. Too little of the one, too much of the other."--David King, Chatham, Canada, 1895

Born a slave in 1847, but raised as a free man on the world renowned African-American Elgin Settlement near present-day Chatham, Ontario, David King is a man whose life has been defined by his violent rebellion against the very person who freed him-the Reverend William King. Far from the pulpit he was intended to occupy as the Reverend King's anointed successor, David has lost his faith in God and turned his back on both his past and his own people by abandoning the Elgin Settlement for nearby Chatham after a final, shattering confrontation with the Reverend King.

A Christian without a Christ, a black man living among whites, a business man who worships William Blake, an emancipated slave forced to fight for his freedom a second time, David is also, thanks to his illegal after-hours tavern and his highly lucrative grave-robbing enterprise, one of Chatham's richest citizens. And if, unlike his Biblical namesake, he long ago rejected the role as king of his people, he nonetheless relishes his self-appointed position as everyday combatant against the twin Victorian Goliaths of hypocrisy and ignorance.

Triggered by the news of the elderly Reverend King's death, middle-aged David is compelled to revisit a past he'd thought he'd left behind, but which-as evidenced by his inability to embrace the contentment he's so dearly earned-he clearly hasn't. Spanning the early history of the pioneering Elgin Settlement to David's wild, whiskey-fueled early years in Chatham to his day-to-day life with his ex-prostitute German lover in present-day, 1895 Chatham, David is a portal to a fascinating, if mostly unknown piece of Canadian history as well as the story of one man's quest for freedom, wisdom, and forgiveness.

Praise for David


A Globe and Mail Best Book Seletion for 2009!


Robertson uses history as a springboard to a world of the imagination where heightened language creates larger-than-life characters who cast the human condition in startling light. He explores new territory with David and his success will solidify his growing reputation as a Canadian novelist with something significant to say about our country and its people.

-Guelph Mercury

David King is a protaganist who might do Mark Twain proud . . . Apart from its vivid sense of time and place, the strength of Robertson's novel is the steely distinctiveness of this voice, as unwavering in its prickly pessimism as it is touching in its untethered yearning.

-Toronto Star

Ray Robertson's story of an angry black man living in 19th-century Ontario is a mix of historical accuracy and vivid storytelling.

-Globe & Mail