White Lung

Lynne Perras teaches communication arts at the University of Calgary.

Set in contemporary Vancouver, White Lung focuses on employees in a
bakery where internal politics, calculated deception, and a
survival-of-the-fittest mentality prevail. It begins with the posting of
a notice announcing that unless the workers agree to a 25 percent wage
cut, the bakery will be forced to close. The novel’s main character,
Klaus Mann, struggles to reconcile his desire to leave the bakery and
open up a coffee shop with his fear of change and possible failure; at
home, his tumultuous relationship with his wife and daughter exacerbate
his frustration and despair. Martin Epp, a janitor at the bakery who
wants Klaus to go into business with him, mysteriously disappears.
Forced to deal with the bakery’s closure are employees such as student
Jeremy Bell, union president Hank Keegan, and general manager C.P. Wong.


The title of White Lung refers to a disease often contracted over years
of work in the baking industry, the equivalent of the coal miner’s
“black lung.” On a symbolic level, the term suggests the stifling,
chronic, and usually incurable emotional state in which many of the
characters find themselves—with little money or power, few marketable
skills, and even less hope of escape to a better way of life. Buday
injects some welcome black humor into this sombre but suspenseful tale.