Idaho Winter

Idaho Winter begins as the story of a boy with an extraordinarily painful existence. He is, through no fault of his own, loathed by everyone in the town where he lives. He meets Madison, the first person to ever show him empathy. When he learns that he is a character in a novel, he breaks free and imprisons his author while remaking his fictional world as he sees fit. The author escapes and sets out with his supporting characters to find a way to bring his novel's mind and heart together on a perilous and paradoxical journey.

';The world of Tony Burgess is savage and blackly funny... It's a place where you shouldn't trust anybody, not even your narrator' (Uptown). Idaho Winter is a boy who, through no fault of his own, is loathed by everyone in his town. His father feeds him roadkill for breakfast, the crossing guard steers cars toward him as he crosses the road, and parents encourage their children to plot against him. That is, until he meets a young girl named Madison who empathizes with his suffering. But when Madison is attacked by dogs meant to harm Idaho, Idaho gets up and runs home, changing the course of the entire story... Idaho soon learns that his suffering has been cruelly designed by a clumsy writer who has made his book meaner than all the others to make it stand out. With this information, Idaho has become armed with the knowledge that the entire world is invented, and that he now has the power to change thingsin a novel that is both ';one of the finest parodies ever penned of the stereotypically didactic young adult novel' (Macleans) and ';the most brilliantly terrifying dream you've ever had' (The Globe and Mail, Toronto). ';[Burgess] proves himself to be a witty, lightning-quick conjurer of misanthropy in this brief, kaleidoscopic novel,' a nominee for the Trillium Award (Publishers Weekly). ';An incredibly rich and thought provoking read about the theory of storytelling.' subTerrain