Gerard Donovan: Julius Winsome

But I did not have the time. I hoisted the rifle and began walking, leaving the two bullets remaining in the clip on the off chance I met Troy in the woods and he looked at me or had anything to say. He was wandering somewhere still, I guessed. I looked back from the edge of the clearing, remembering again, knowing again, and leaving for the first time everything my father knew. Although it was dark, I was familiar with the way and the light was good above me; once I reached the paved road it was only those twelve miles to Fort Kent. I would stay off the road and be there by dawn.

It being early morning on a Sunday, the police station would have one man on duty, it would be brightly lit and most likely warm, and somewhere in that building a hot cup of tea might be found, and we could talk for a while until some others came to take the details, driving straight from their beds maybe, running to their gates in long coats, from late fireplaces, from bottles. All this was clear in my mind as I took the dirt road with the Enfield. I saw the living flowers, my living father and Hobbes, and kept them firmly before me, but when I glanced again after only a minute the trees had closed in around and the cabin was lost to view.

I want to thank my agent Tracy Bohan, and my editor Angus Cargill for their support; my friend and neighbor Doug Swanson, whose farm and dog inspired the story; and the following, who read the manuscript and told me what they thought of it: Richard Donovan, Sara Kallenbach, Graham Lewis, Tim McCarthy, Christina Nalty, and Jay Prefontaine. Martin Pegler’s Out of Nowhere provided an excellent history of sniping. I found most of my lead character’s Elizabethan vocabulary in David Crystal and Ben Crystal’s Shakespeare’s Words: A Glossary and Language Companion .

Gerard Donovan is the author of the novels Schopenhauer’s Telescope , which won the 2004 Kerry Group Irish Fiction Award and was longlisted for the 2003 Booker Prize, Doctor Salt and Julius Winsome , described in the Irish Times as ‘a timeless fable of loss, isolation and violence’. In 2008 he published the acclaimed story collection, Country of the Grand .

Schopenhauer’s Telescope

Doctor Salt

Country of the Grand

First published in the United States in 2006

by The Overlook Press, Peter Mayer Publishers, Inc.

Woodstock & New York

First published in the United Kingdom in 2007

by Faber and Faber Ltd

Bloomsbury House

74–77 Great Russell Street

London WC1B 3DA

This ebook edition first published in 2013

All rights reserved

© Gerard Donovan, 2007

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