David Adams Richards takes us behind his gun and into the Canadian forest for his most powerful work of non-fiction yet.

In his brilliant non-fiction, David Adams Richards - first and foremost one of Canada's greatest and best-beloved novelists - has been writing a kind of memoir by other means. Like his previous titles Lines On Water, about his pursuit of angling, and Hockey Dreams, about the game his disabled body prevented him from playing, Facing the Hunter explores the meaning of a sport and the way in which it touches lives, not least that of the author. And as with God Is, his recent book about his faith, it is also an impassioned defence of a set of values and a way of life that Richards believes are under attack.

Lovers of David Adams Richards' novels will be fascinated and enlightened to note the interplay between his former life as a keen hunter - he hunts less and less these days, as he explains - and the narratives and characters of his fiction. But this is also a perfect stating point for anyone coming new to Richards. The storytelling in this book, the evocation of the Canadian wild and those who venture into it, the sheer power of the prose, show a great writer at the height of his powers.

• Doubleday Canada, October 2011

Longlisted for the Charles Taylor Prize for Literary Non-Fiction

"I will read and cherish Facing the Hunter for its melancholy, joyful, hard-won wisdom on hunting, his love of the animals and the people who hunt them and the endangered, magnificent habitat of the Miramichi Valley. That is the genius of this book. Every ecosystem in this country should have defenders as eloquent and wise as David Adams Richards."
-The Globe and Mail

"Facing the Hunter effectively and stylishly articulates a view of hunting that arguably ought to be given a wider consideration by those who know little about it. For those whose views are aligned with Richards, it's a book for the comfort of the fireside and a decent dram."
-Edmonton Journal

"...a meditation by a thoughtful man who cares passionately about something that has helped define him as an artist."
-The Record

"This wise and beautifully written book, full of stories of Richards' people and their ways in the Miramichi area of New Brunswick, and in other locales in that province, is an elegy for a vanishing way of life."
-The StarPhoenix