The Healer

Steve Pitt is a Toronto-based freelance writer and an award-winning journalist. He has written many young adult and children's books, including Day of the Flying Fox: The True Story of World War II Pilot Charley Fox.

Tim Wakelin is a burnt-out 32-year-old, journalist who is trying to pull
his life back together after the death of his beloved wife. Caroline
Troyer is a small-town nobody who has suddenly leaped to national
notoriety as a mystic healer of terminal illness. Hoping to save his
writing career, Tim arrives in Caroline’s hometown aiming to find out
whether the Healer is a freak or a fake. Instead of finding a quick
story, Wakelin is drawn into a murky cosmos dominated by Caroline’s
psychotic father. Lurking against the deceptive backdrop of a sleepy
down-and-out town in the Canadian Shield, Wakelin uncovers a conspiracy
of half-truths and brutal family secrets.

The Healer is not exactly an easy read. Hollingshead’s prose is often
highly stylized and granite-hard, forcing readers to pick their way
carefully along the pages like rock climbers searching for handholds on
a steep cliff face. The author uses this style to create whirlwinds of
imagery. (On page 79, for example, he takes more than 500 words just to
describe a dog fart, a truck crash, and a catatonic seizure.)

In 1995, Greg Hollingshead won the Governor General’s Award for
Roaring Girl, a collection of short stories. This book, which was
shortlisted for the Giller Prize, proves that Hollingshead has also
mastered the novel.