How I Spent My Summer Holidays

In a rare opportunity to hear from a legend of Canadian literature in his own voice, this newly-abridged audio edition of How I Spent My Summer Holidays is read by the W.O. Mitchell himself. During the hot Saskatchewan summer of 1924, twelve-year-old Hugh digs up a cave to discover an escaped patient from the nearby mental hospital hiding inside. In an attempt to shelter the runaway, Hugh and his friends enlist the help of war veteran and rumrunner King Motherwell, who introduces them to an illicit underworld they never knew existed. When the boys find themselves embroiled in a murder, they are forced to leave behind their childhoods or an adult world of sex, violence and deceit. W.O. Mitchell’s beloved coming-of-age novel follows one young man’s journey through both expected and extraordinary hurdles of adolescence on the dusty Canadian prairies in a changing interwar world.

When" How I Spent My Summer Holidays was first published in 1981 a Western reviewer wrote: "If "Who Has Seen the Wind told the story of a young boy's coming to terms with death, "How I Spent My Summer Holidays tells of a young man's attempt to come to terms with his own sexuality and that of the world around him."The twelve-year-old young man is Hugh, and in small-town Saskatchewan it is the hot summer of 1924. When Hugh and his friends dig a secret cave out on the Prairie, they soon find it occupied by an escaped patient from the mental hospital. Defying the adult world, the boys become involved with a former war hero and current rum-runner, King Motherwell, in sheltering and feeding the runaway. When passions aroused by sex explode into murder, Hugh leaves his boyhood behind him for ever.