Witness To Life

In the acclaimed Shadow of Ashland, Terence M. Green introduced us to the poignant beauty and rich history of his own family. Publishers Weekly called Shadow of Ashland "wonderfully imagined and poetically told....With Leo's narration as evocative as the pages of a newly discovered family album, this proves a remarkably affecting literary work that the publisher rightly compares to Jack Finney's Time and Again." Now in A Witness to Life, with his spare but powerful style, Green examines the meaning of life, family, death--the connections that bind us all. The story begins at the moment of Martin Radley's death. His soul, free to drift back over his life, searches for meaning in a welter of change and occasional tragedy. He bears silent witness to his defining moments and the enigmatic patterns of his life. As Martin grows in a young man in Canada, he meets Maggie Curtis. Soon they are married, have a daughter and son, and are enjoying life. But Maggie dies suddenly, leaving Martin ill-equipped to be the single parent of two teenagers. He does a bad enough job that he loses their respect and the warmth of their affection that he desperately desires. Lost in a muddle, he falls passionately in love with Gertrude McNulty, twenty years younger. He marries her and they have a child. A new wife, a new daughter, new pieces for the puzzle, but as he tries to pull together a new life, his old one slips away. His son, Jack, leaves for the promise of work in the U.S. and disappears. His older daughter marries, withdrawing into her new family, and in a few years Gertrude dies, and Martin once again is left alone to raise a child. Martin is a good man who has failed at something important to him, and now all his love and attention are devoted to his young daughter, for decades. When death finally takes him, Martin is still looking for answers. Now, he has come full circle and has found only a few answers but, perhaps, redemption.

"A Witness to Life is an odd hybrid, a historical novel with elements of magical realism, an imaginative reconstruction of the life of a real person."--Sunday Ft. Lauderdale Sun-Sentinel

"Mr. Green's remembrance of things past becomes an emotionally charged experience that will not soon be forgotten."--Dallas Morning News

"I thoroughly enjoyed following Radey's life as he made a mess of it, and clearly the credit for this lies with his creator. Green is a lyrical, contemplative writer whose fantastical tendencies are held firmly in check by the realism demanded by this fictional biography. Striking a delicate balance between fantasy and reality the author lifts the mundane into the realm of the spiritual....[It] holds much to enjoy, particularly its detailed portrait of Toronto in the first half of the century....Green's Joycean celebration of Toronto is worth a shelf full of histories. It comes alive in a way only the best fiction can, allowing the reader to be a witness to the life of Martin Radey and the city he called home."--The Globe and Mail (Toronto, ON)

Green returns to the history of his own family with the prequel to his critically acclaimed Shadow of Ashland. This is the story of Martin Radey, Greens grandfather. Radey, the child of Irish immigrant parents in late nineteenth-century Canada, lived most of his life in Toronto, for years a single parent after the death of his young wife. But this is his story beginning at the moment of his death, drifting backward and starting again from his early life, a search for meaning in a welter of change and occasional tragedy.