KEN McGOOGAN

 
Overview

Frankie McCracken is still recovering from the Psychedelic Sixties when, while working as a fire lookout in the Canadian Rockies, he finds himself wrestling with a miracle-worker who claims to be the late Jack Kerouac, King of the Beats. This kaleidoscopic coming-of-age novel arrives in 2016 like a note in a bottle from a distant world. Fiction writer Matt Cohen hailed this work as "an unrepentant blast from the past." It juggles timelines and narrators, asserts that Kerouac was bigger than Beat, and celebrates his French-Canadian roots. This revised edition is the definitive version of a favorite novel. It inspired a song, also called Kerouac’s Ghost.

 
Overview

Chasing Safiya is a millennial quest novel with a supernatural dimension. The story opens in San Francisco, where journalist Bernie Lanigan survives a car accident, a Near Death Experience, and a visitation from his dead wife, Behroze. She tells him that to revive their young daughter, who lies in a coma as a result of the accident, Bernie must embark on a bizarre around-the-world adventure, a “metaphysical scavenger hunt” to gather fire-worthy souvenirs from sixteen scattered cities -- and then purify one of these mementoes in a sacred fire guarded by a mighty Shaman.

Sailing out of New York on a freighter, the reluctant Bernie meets Safyia Naidoo, an award-winning Canadian novelist whose given name means wisdom or clear mindedness, and her traveling companion, Taggart Oates, a middle-aged English author famous for his controversial occult thrillers. These two are also seeking the golden flame. With them, Bernie forms an uneasy alliance – one troubled by his increasingly complex relationship with Safyia.

While gathering the requisite souvenirs in Spain, Italy, Greece, Syria, Sri Lanka, India, and Tanzania Bernie gets caught up in the timeless struggle between good and evil. He battles would be death-dealers known as the Chinvat and contends with Zoroastrianism, synchronicity, Friedrich Nietzsche, existentialism, Carl Jung, high-voltage sex, Taoism, archetypal experience, western shamanism, astral projection, Buddhism, debilitating jealousy, psychic healing, and sundry Swahili proverbs only to be sorely tested at the Bridge of Judgment.

In Chasing Safiya, magic realism meets contemporary urban fantasy. Author Ken McGoogan adds a postcolonial sensibility, a neo-Beatific joi de vivre and a wry sense of humor to create a wacky picaresque which proves that clear-mindedness rules, great sex transmogrifies, and magic is alive.

 
Overview

Book # 15 is a brilliant ghost-written memoir, but to reveal its title would give the game away.

 
Overview

Set mostly in Montreal, partly in Greece, and with echoes of the Caribbean, Calypso Warrior is a molotov cocktail of sex, lies and language laws.

 
Overview

When Canadian speed skater Catriona Le May Doan carried the Maple Leaf into the Salt Lake City arena at the opening of the XIX Winter Olympic Games, she carried with her the hopes and dreams of a nation. The Canadian speed queen, famous for her 1,000-watt smile, had so dominated the 500-metre sprints during recent years that she was known as the Fastest Woman in the World. But Le May Doan was battling a famous jinx – the curse of the flag-bearer. In 2002, the jinx was broken, and Catriona thrilled Canadians at home and in Salt Lake City when she won the 500 metre-race.

In Going For Gold, Catriona tells the story of her life with assistance from writer Ken McGoogan. Born and raised in Saskatoon, by age 15 she already was a track star provincially. At 18, she joined Canada’s Olympic Team and began competing internationally. Then, at the Olympics in Lillehammer in 1994, with experts predicting that she would reach the podium, the 23-year-old athlete crashed in her best event. She describes her dark night of the soul, and how, eventually, she emerged to skate faster than ever – faster than any other woman has ever skated.

She writes of becoming a committed Christian and how that has changed her; of meeting and marrying Bart Doan, a black-hatted rodeo cowboy who wrestles steers, coaches hockey, and drives a Zamboni at the Calgary Olympic Oval. She writes of winning world cup races and world championships and Olympic gold medals, of driving world records down and down and down again to levels undreamed of even a few years ago.

Catriona Le May Doan will be competing at the ISU world sprint championships in Calgary in January 2003 and, perhaps has her swan song at the world world championships in Berlin, Germany, in March 2003. A true star, Catriona values all these stunning accomplishments less than the letters she receives from young Canadians who look to her as a role model.