Son Bird Saint

Abstract

Son Bird Saint is a literary novel that explores the idea of human lives influencing each other. At its core it is the story of Simon Hemphill who receives the handwritten life story of Wren Wallace, a famous friend of his parents’ whose life and death has shaped Simon’s past and future. When Simon travels between Saskatoon, Montreal and Toronto to interview the characters from Wren’s manuscript, he pieces together all the stories that converged to influence Wren Wallace’s life and, ultimately, his own. A story about understanding where you came from, Son Bird Saint is an omniscient narrative comprised of first-person narrators. Alternating between Simon’s interviews and Wren’s manuscript, the novel unravels a story much larger and more intricate than Wren or Simon could have foreseen. Spanning three generations and five decades, this novel explores character from youth to old age. It examines how we’re shaped by the people in our lives and those absent from it. Using metafictional techniques, the novel merges form and content into a multi-narrative story that exists outside the boundaries of traditionally structured literary novels.