Ridgerunner

Ridgerunner

Written by: Adamson, Gil
Add to Wish List

Writers’ Trust Fiction Prize Winner

Scotiabank Giller Prize Finalist

Part literary Western and part historical mystery, Writers’ Trust Fiction Prize winner Ridgerunner is now available as a paperback.

November 1917. William Moreland is in mid-flight. After nearly twenty years, the notorious thief, known as the Ridgerunner, has returned. Moving through the Rocky Mountains and across the border to Montana, the solitary drifter, impoverished in means and aged beyond his years, is also a widower and a father. And he is determined to steal enough money to secure his son’s future.

Twelve-year-old Jack Boulton has been left in the care of Sister Beatrice, a formidable nun who keeps him in cloistered seclusion in her grand old house. Though he knows his father is coming for him, the boy longs to return to his family’s cabin, deep in the woods. When Jack finally breaks free, he takes with him something the nun is determined to get back — at any cost.

Set against the backdrop of a distant war raging in Europe and a rapidly changing landscape in the West, Gil Adamson’s follow-up to her award-winning debut, The Outlander, is a vivid historical novel that draws from the epic tradition and a literary Western brimming with a cast of unforgettable characters touched with humour and loss, and steeped in the wild of the natural world.

Writers’ Trust Fiction Prize Winner

Scotiabank Giller Prize Finalist

Part literary Western and part historical mystery, Writers’ Trust Fiction Prize winner Ridgerunner is now available as a paperback.

November 1917. William Moreland is in mid-flight. After nearly twenty years, the notorious thief, known as the Ridgerunner, has returned. Moving through the Rocky Mountains and across the border to Montana, the solitary drifter, impoverished in means and aged beyond his years, is also a widower and a father. And he is determined to steal enough money to secure his son’s future.

Twelve-year-old Jack Boulton has been left in the care of Sister Beatrice, a formidable nun who keeps him in cloistered seclusion in her grand old house. Though he knows his father is coming for him, the boy longs to return to his family’s cabin, deep in the woods. When Jack finally breaks free, he takes with him something the nun is determined to get back — at any cost.

Set against the backdrop of a distant war raging in Europe and a rapidly changing landscape in the West, Gil Adamson’s follow-up to her award-winning debut, The Outlander, is a vivid historical novel that draws from the epic tradition and a literary Western brimming with a cast of unforgettable characters touched with humour and loss, and steeped in the wild of the natural world.

Published By House of Anansi Press Inc — May 12, 2020
Specifications 456 pages | 5.25 in x 8 in 456 pages | 5.25 in x 8 in
Supporting Resources
(select item to download) 		Excerpt
Written By

GIL ADAMSON is the critically acclaimed author of Ridgerunner, which won the Writers’ Trust Fiction Prize, was a finalist for the Scotiabank Giller Prize, and was named a best book of the year by the Globe and Mail and the CBC. Her first novel, The Outlander, won the Dashiell Hammett Prize for Literary Excellence in Crime Writing, the Amazon.ca First Novel Award, the ReLit Award, and the Drummer General’s Award. It was a finalist for the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize, CBC Canada Reads, and the Prix Femina in France; longlisted for the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award; and chosen as a Globe and Mail and Washington Post Top 100 Book. She is also the author of a collection of linked stories, Help Me, Jacques Cousteau, and two poetry collections, Primitive and Ashland. She lives in Toronto.
Written By

GIL ADAMSON is the critically acclaimed author of Ridgerunner, which won the Writers’ Trust Fiction Prize, was a finalist for the Scotiabank Giller Prize, and was named a best book of the year by the Globe and Mail and the CBC. Her first novel, The Outlander, won the Dashiell Hammett Prize for Literary Excellence in Crime Writing, the Amazon.ca First Novel Award, the ReLit Award, and the Drummer General’s Award. It was a finalist for the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize, CBC Canada Reads, and the Prix Femina in France; longlisted for the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award; and chosen as a Globe and Mail and Washington Post Top 100 Book. She is also the author of a collection of linked stories, Help Me, Jacques Cousteau, and two poetry collections, Primitive and Ashland. She lives in Toronto.

Short-listed, Scotiabank Giller Prize, 2020

Short-listed, Writers’ Trust Fiction Prize, 2020

“Adamson’s Ridgerunner is the kind of book that forges the possible from the impossible, despite age and borders. It’s a hearty, brave novel that challenges us to live life on our own terms.” —Chicago Review of Books

“Part literary Western, part historical mystery, it’s a vivid story that grabs you by the eyeballs on page one.” —Globe and Mail

“Engrossing … Adamson immerses readers in life as it was a century ago with attention to details about horses, wolves, bears, the weather, and all of nature, including the light and dark of human nature. Her sly plotting never quits, luring the reader into shocking surprises.” —Booklist, STARRED REVIEW

“I have just finished reading Ridgerunner by Gil Adamson, a novel that left me deeply satisfied and savouring the experience of reading a really good book … A great story and a wonderfully written novel.” —Metro North Bay-Nippissing

“Adamson writes with a sly wit and a deep insight into her characters and the natural world but, more significantly, into how the characters and the natural world interact, shaping and being shaped by one another . . . Everything packs a significant punch and draws the reader into the novel’s world with a startling immediacy.” —Quill & Quire

“Striking … Once again, Adamson’s powers as a poet weave her characters deeply into the natural world.” —Georgia Straight

“Rich and exciting … delightful, sinewy language that takes time with the details of the moment, of humour and whimsy … Adamson’s writing soars.” —Hamilton Review of Books


“Ridgerunner is a spectacular novel.” —Emily St. John Mandel, author of The Glass Hotel and Station Eleven

“Ridgerunner is truly magnificent. It hearkens back to when novels were generous and ambitious, big-shouldered and big-hearted. Gil Adamson writes worlds utterly unto their own.” —Robert Olmstead, award-winning author of Coal Black Horse and Savage Country

“In Gil Adamson’s Ridgerunner we meet thirteen-year-old Jack Boulton, whose quest — perhaps foolish, certainly dangerous — is to be reunited with his only living family member, his father. A beautiful and moving novel about the durability of family ties, Ridgerunner is a brilliant literary achievement, and in Jack Boulton, Adamson has created one of the most vividly rendered children you will ever encounter in fiction. I loved every page of it.” —Michael Redhill, Scotiabank Giller Prize–winning author of Bellevue Square

“Gil Adamson understands the pain and the necessary beauty of our connection with other people better than anyone. Ferocious, entirely authentic, funny, and tragic, Ridgerunner is a wild adventure spun in exalted prose: the book I’ve been wanting to read for years.” —Marina Endicott, award-winning author of Good to a Fault and The Difference

“In Ridgerunner, Gil Adamson manages a balancing act of beauty and violence, humour and heartbreak. She can write about anything: a nun’s madness, a twelve-year-old boy’s cooking talents, the way a horse moves through a cold forest. How it feels to be held on your mother’s lap, how it feels to jump off a moving train, how it feels to keep the people you’ve lost alive in your mind. The novel is vivid, beautiful, and fully alive.” —Jamie Harrison, award-winning author of The Widow Nash and The Center of Everything

“[The characters] are so real, the time and place so convincing, and most importantly, the story captivating to the core.” —Jon Mayes