A deliciously offbeat chronicle of misfits, mishaps, and small-town mayhem.
Langlois’s darkly comic collection gathers ten interconnected stories set in a fictional Northeastern Ontario community loosely inspired by Sudbury. Across bars, garages, cemeteries, trailer parks, spiritual retreats, and local competitions, an eccentric cast stumbles through ambition, loneliness, rivalry, reinvention, and spectacularly poor decisions.
Langlois has a sharp eye for the absurdities of ordinary life, pairing bawdy humor and outrageous mishaps with surprising moments of tenderness. The collection’s strongest asset is its intricate construction: characters who appear briefly in one tale resurface elsewhere, while seemingly isolated incidents gain fresh significance as connections accumulate. Herb Pilon’s spiritual search (“The Temple of the White Wind”), Lonnie Cox’s transformation from self-styled boyhood superhero to detective (“The Shadow Lord” and “The Ballad of Roland Parks”), and unlucky Nick Hoyt’s struggle for a fresh start (“The Gravedigger’s Lament”) are especially memorable. Berrylove itself emerges as a compelling character—rough-edged, contradictory, judgmental, and fiercely alive. Langlois’s unapologetically profane prose suits this unruly world, while his affection for its misfits gives the satire warmth.
A lively, unpredictable mosaic that finds humor, humanity, and wonder in life’s glorious mess.
***
FriesenPress
Pub date May 7, 2026
ISBN 978-1038367402
Price $28.10 Hardcover, $22.99 Paperback, $5.99 Kindle edition
