Tracked down by a young advertising executive, King Leary is invited to Toronto to record a ginger ale commercial alongside the NHL’s newest hockey sensation.

Leary travels to the big city with his roommate and a slightly off-kilter male nurse, but he’s also accompanied by his ghosts: Clay Clinton, his one-time best friend and former hockey manager; Manny Oz, Leary’s challenger for the crown; and the hockey-playing monks of Bowmanville Reformatory, where Leary’s career began.

The trip is a sometimes hilarious, sometimes heart-wrenching odyssey that reveals the truths of Leary’s not-always-illustrious life.

Published in 1987, King Leary won the Stephen Leacock Award for Humour and was short-listed for the Trillium Award. The book has been out of print for some time, and is being republished with a new cover for Canada Reads.

 
Price: 19.95 CDN