Finalist, Giller Prize

Winner of 2 Saskatchewan Book Awards (Best First Book; City of Saskatoon Book Award)

Finalist, Saskatchewan Book Award (Book of the Year)

Winner, Canadian Authors’ Association-BookTV Emerging Writer Award

Finalist, Amazon/ Books in Canada First Novel Award

Rowan Friesen has made a career of drug-dealing and small-time thievery on the outer edges of Saskatoon. Shiftless and seemingly friendless, he is, at first glance, an unlikely protagonist. But as Stolen unfolds, we learn the details of Rowan’s life: his well meaning but self-absorbed mother, his mentally ill father, and a high-school friendship both lustful and incendiary. This intriguing back-story runs alongside a current-day murder mystery, complete with road trips, arson, drink and drugs, tech nerds and the RCMP. Rowan Friesen may not be the world’s most likable character, but the complexity and honesty of his story is thrilling. Stolen’s lean, tight narrative tells a tale of theft, love, and madness on the Canadian prairie, and moves along like a half-ton pickup bouncing over dirt roads.

Praise for Stolen:

Globe and Mail Top 5 First Fiction

Kate Sutherland's "Top Ten Books of 2006"

“Lapointe constructs the familiar world, the one inside each of us, in the lives of strangers. It’s what fiction does best.” (The Globe and Mail)

“It moves with the force of what’s right and true and must not be elided.” (Giller Prize Jury)

"One of the many achievements of Stolen is that it offers readers of Canadian literature [a] depiction of a Saskatchewan in transition from a predominantly rural agrarian society to an urban one dominated by global capitalism … This Saskatchewan might be fallen, but its residents persevere. Moreover, Stolen proposes that the province was never as pristine as it might have appeared. Lapointe’s novel, in its innovative, contemporary depiction of the province, heralds a brave new age of prairie writing. For this it should be celebrated." (Canadian Literature)

John Thomas Osborne, aka Tom Osborne, was born on Baffin Island in June of 1949. He has illustrated various books, including Mary Beth Knechtel’s under-acknowledged The Goldfish That Exploded and Social Credit for Beginners: An Armchair Guide (Pulp Press, 1986). He is also author of several books of poetry, including Under the Shadow of Thy Wings (1986), 9 Love Poems, and Please Wait for Attendant to Open Gate. His first novel Foozlers was published by Anvil Press in 2004 and was followed in 2006 by Dead Man In the Orchestra Pit (Anvil). Osborne grew up in Kamloops, B.C. and Vancouver, co-founded Pulp Press in the early 1970s, and currently resides in Maple Ridge, B.C.

Annette Lapointe's profile page

• Giller Prize Nominee