Sputnik Diner

David E. Kemp, a former professor of drama at Queen’s University, is
the author of The Pleasures and Treasures of the United Kingdom.

Rick Maddocks was born in Wales, grew up in Southern Ontario, and now
lives in Vancouver, where he writes and performs music. This collection
of linked stories is set in Nanticoke, which is situated along the upper
lip of Lake Erie and is home to the Sputnik Diner. The town’s diverse
characters gather at this greasy spoon and discuss betrayals, dreams,
and longings over endless cups of coffee.

The people of the Sputnik Diner are funny, gutsy, lovable, and flawed,
although the author makes no judgments about them. They include two
young brothers who steal the family car and try to come to terms with
their father’s illness, a waitress whose mission to seek out her birth
parents yields unexpected results, and the diner’s brusque
French-Canadian owner who dishes out fast food and advice in a fractured
English patois that is uniquely his own.

There is not a false situation or character in

this book. Maddocks knows Ontario’s tobacco-growing country from the
inside. The opening story in this stirring, evocative collection won
Prairie Fire’s Long Fiction Competition.