Selected as the 2008 Canada Read's Winner!

“A dazzling display of fictional footwork...The author has not written just another hockey novel; he has turned hockey in a metaphor for magic.” Maclean's
 
Percival Leary was once the King of the Ice, one of hockey’s greatest heroes. Now, in the South Grouse Nursing Home, where he shares a room with Edmund “Blue” Hermann, the antagonistic and alcoholic reporter who once chronicled his career, Leary looks back on his tumultuous life and times: his days at the boys’ reformatory when he burned down a house; the four mad monks who first taught him to play hockey; and the time he executed the perfect “St. Louis Whirlygig” to score the winning goal in the 1919 Stanley Cup final.

Now all but forgotten, Leary is only a legend in his own mind until a high-powered advertising agency decides to feature him in a series of ginger ale commercials. With his male nurse, his son, and the irrepressible Blue, Leary sets off for Toronto on one last adventure as he revisits the scenes of his glorious life as King of the Ice.

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WINNER 1988 - Stephen Leacock Memorial Medal for Humour

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“A type of literary hat trick...most engaging…. [Quarrington’s] colourful, inventive language is addictive.” The Globe and Mail

“An extraordinary writer with a rare gift.” Timothy Findley

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"I was quite surprised with this book. If I hadn't won it, I don't think I would have read it. I'm glad I did. I thought that Percival (King Leary) was portrayed wonderfully... Quarrington adds a bit of realism by having Percival think and speak like a "normal" person. In this way, it made me think of Holden Caulfield in Catcher in the Rye."
- Jen V, Manitoba

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Visit Paul Quarrington's website

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Novelist Paul Quarrington is also a musician, most recently in the band Porkbelly Futures, an award-winning screenwriter and an acclaimed non-fiction writer. His last novel, Galveston, was nominated for the Giller; Whale Music won the Governor General’s Award for Fiction in 1989. Quarrington has also won the Stephen Leacock Medal for King Leary.

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