Dragging the River

by Trevor Clark

In 1980, while working in a warehouse, Lane Courtney takes stock in the family myth that he is a descendant of Reginald Fitz Urse, one of the knights who martyred Saint Becket in 1170. His laconic reflections are interwoven with misadventures as he hangs out with prostitutes, errant bikers and speed freaks. Courtney is going nowhere. Then he begins a volatile relationship with a black stripper that becomes increasingly complicated after she becomes pregnant. Courtney later heads west and finds work on an oilrig. In the wilds of Alberta both his lack of direction and the fame that rewards those who kill the famous come into focus after John Lennon is shot. He drifts south with the unbalanced idea of shooting President Reagan to uphold the family name, prostitutes himself in New Orleans, and buys a gun in Houston. Before he can head up to Washington DC, however, this last-ditch attempt at success is derailed by historical events he could not have foreseen.

172 pages, Paperback

First published March 28, 2009

About the author

Among other things, Trevor Clark has worked as an oil rig roughneck, editor,
portrait photographer, bookstore manager, and home entertainment coordinator for a TV movie production company in London, where he lived for a number of years.

He is the author of fiction - "Born To Lose" (ECW Press, 1989,) "Dragging The River", "Love On The Killing Floor", "Escape and Other Stories", "Hair-Trigger" and "Damaged At Daybreak", (Now Or Never Publishing, 2009, 2010, 2012, 2014 and 2019,) and his photographs have appeared in "Designs of Darkness: Interviews With Detective Novelists", (Bowling Green University Popular Press, 1983,) and "Interviews With Contemporary Novelists" (Macmillan/ St. Martin’s Press, 1986,) both by Diana Cooper-Clark, as well as "Ross Macdonald: A Biography", by Tom Nolan, (Scribner’s, 1999,) "Meanwhile There Are Letters", edited by Tom Nolan and Suzanne Marrs, (Arcade, 2015,) "NOW", and "The Globe And Mail". He is from Toronto, has lived in Vancouver, and currently resides in Montreal.

Now Or Never will be publishing another book of his in the spring of 2020, titled "Lonely As a Cloud Plus Two Stories".

Reviews -

“The notes of rebellious despair that run through these stories mix with notes of satisfaction to be experienced in the proud, even rhapsodic, excoriation of society and self. There is no rebel like a self-proclaimed member of the legion of the damned. Clark writes this vision with conviction.”

- "The Canadian Book Review Manual", 1989

"Trevor Clark's sympathy for jailbirds, panhandlers and whores is tempered by keen insight into the complications of their lives. He writes about the 'minor inferno' of their deprivation with a compassion that is lacking where they live. Impressive and recommended."

- "Ottawa Citizen", January, 1990

“Told in clear, understated prose, 'Love On The Killing Floor' is a rare, sharp work of social realism, providing a vivid portrait of Toronto at a precise moment in time. The novel’s frank exploration of race in contemporary Canada will leave many uncomfortable.”

- "Quill & Quire", 2010

"Trevor Clark creates such diverse and complex characters in 'Escape and Other Stories' that it's like reading ten different stories by ten different authors... 'Escape' is all too believable. Life is painfully awkward much of the time. And we disappoint ourselves as much as we disappoint others."

- "BC Bookworld", Autumn 2012

"Unflinching, unapologetic and fast-paced, ("Hair-Trigger") switches effortlessly through unreliable narrators, demanding that the reader parse truth from fiction, good from bad, right from wrong."

- "Publishers Weekly", 2014

“Trevor Clark’s writing is as clean as a flying bullet, his characters are messy and tender, their stories as ragged and bloody as the exit wound.”

- Stephen Reid, author of "A Crowbar in the Buddhist Garden: Writing From Prison", 2014

Related links:

http://www.quillandquire.com/reviews/...

http://www.thestar.com/article/220657

http://www.abcbookworld.com/view_auth...

http://www.canadianauthors.net/c/clar...

http://intoviews.wordpress.com/2010/0...

http://paperbacksavant.blogspot.com/2...

Article titled "Sex In Fiction" for "Write: The Magazine of the Writers' Union of Canada",
Volume 39, Number 3 -

Review of "Johnny Kicker" by Jeremy Beal on the website "Canadian Books and Authors" -

http://www.canadianauthors.net/b/beal...

Also, "Born To Lose" is discussed in Amy Lavender Harris' book about fiction set in Toronto, titled Imagining Toronto, pages 162-163. (Published by Mansfield Press, Toronto, 2010.)

Reviews

[Sharon Miller · Rating 5 out of 5]

..... the of mingling of cruel humour and lyrical tenderness, the insatiable interest in human desire from its most refined to its most brutally carnal, grip you as tightly as any thriller … It’s a wonderful structural device, this layering of similar situations on top of each other like a series of transparencies that cumulatively portray lives as they exists in time as well as in space … An amazing amount of the passion and folly of the human condition is woven into Clark’s characters lives, all beautifully observed and memorably articulated. His characters never sound too on-point, his ending never too tidy, and faults are easy to forgive, because what he has written is not a speech but a novel, one that’s big, necessary, and utterly persuasive.