When She's Gone

Matt Hartman is a freelance editor and cataloguer, running Hartman Cataloguing, Editing and Indexing Services.

“There are just some things money can’t buy,” says Winnipeg writer
Steve Lundin in his hockey novel. Unfortunately, hockey teams are not
among them. Especially the Winnipeg Jets hockey team. Lundin—aka
Steven Erikson, under which pseudonym he writes the Malazan Book of the
Fallen fantasy series—fantasizes here as well, but the premise of When
She’s Gone is the effect of the Jets’ departure in 1996 (and, in
fact, the absorption of the fledgling World Hockey League by the
established National Hockey League).

Distraught at the Jets’ departure and beset by family problems, Jack
and Mark, two hockey playing brothers, leave Winnipeg and travel to
England so Mark can try out for a team in Cardiff. Soured by the avarice
and greed of owners and players alike, the brothers carry baggage that
includes anger and frustration. “Greedy players on one side and stupid
owners who’ve been paying into the players’ greed for years,” says
Jack. “Players want the owners to stay stupid so they can keep getting
stupid big salaries, and owners want to stop it all and cap the salaries
to make up for how stupid they’ve been for years.”

Lundin’s technique weaves what he sees as the decline of professional
hockey into the history of Canada. Writing a heated prose that
re-creates the speed and flow of the game itself, Lundin has his heroes
decide to paddle from Edinburgh to Cardiff in a rented 17-foot canoe.
There are flashbacks to family, many love affairs, and adventures along
the way. But Lundin’s angry thesis remains clear throughout:
“What’s anything worth these days?” he asks. “The answer is a
price-tag and nothing else, all the words clustering the idea of worth,
words like heart and pride and success and grit, they all have
price-tags these days.”