The six stories in Andrew Boden's debut collection, The Secret History of My Hometown, comprise a reinvented history of the town of Cranbrook, British Columbia, from its birth in the late nineteenth century to its death and re-birth in 1983, after a Soviet missile strike. Moving by way of hard "what ifs" all the while grounded in the streets and surrounding wilderness of a town in southeastern B.C.
What if when the Sells Floto Circus lost six elephants into the Cranbrook wilderness, a young, lovesick Ernest Hemingway came to hunt the missing pachyderms? What if Leon Trotsky retreated not to Mexico City but to Cranbrook while it was embroiled in labour unrest? What if, following the bombing of Pearl Harbor, a Chinese family's grocery in Cranbrook depended on the intervention of none other than the legendary Monkey King?
Boden's stories are driven by slyly funny, plainspoken characters who make the unlikely so likely it will sneak up on you. For fans of the fiction of Karen Russell, George Saunders, and Zsuzsi Gartner, The Secret History of My Hometown brings the fantastical to an otherwise unassuming railway stop in the shadow of the Rocky Mountains.
