8th House Publishing is pleased to announce the forthcoming release of Canada Strikes Back, a work of literary political fiction by Richard Rathwell.

Set in a near-future Canada absorbed — incrementally, then abruptly — into a continental security empire dominated by the United States, the novel traces the formation and operation of TORCH, a grassroots resistance network in British Columbia's Fraser Valley, across the twenty-six months of what the occupying authority calls "the Continental Stabilization."
At its centre is Nadia Okafor, a Nigerian-Canadian Tim Hortons shift supervisor and graduate student, who asks the question that carries the book from first page to last: what do you want it to look like when it's over? Around her gathers an unforgettable ensemble — Danny Arsenault, the Acadian TransLink driver and Kandahar veteran who counts things; Marguerite Tremblay-Côté, the political economist whose fifteen years of research becomes the resistance's founding document; Silas Raven and Clara Watts of the Haida Nation; and Colonel Sarah Maines, the American commander assigned to run an operation her own paper predicted would fail.
Structured in five parts and drawing on the French Resistance, Myanmar's Civil Disobedience Movement, and the historical analysis of how empires fail, Canada Strikes Back is a novel about occupation, reconstruction, and the specific courage that is simply the refusal to stop. The Fraser River runs through it as both landscape and witness — "patient and indifferent and fully itself."
Further details, including the release date, will be announced shortly. Cover tentative.