The Canal House

By Mark Lee

Daniel McFarland has refined the life of a war correspondent down to an art. He knows how to get information out of officials who won't talk. He knows how to find the one man with a car who can get you out of town. He knows how to judge the gravity of a situation in a war-torn area (it's a bad sign when the dogs are gone). And he knows how to get to the heart of an explosive story and emerge unscathed. To Daniel, getting the story is everything.
When a trip to a warlord's camp in Uganda goes awry and Daniel's companions end up dead, he has his first serious moment of reckoning with his lack of faith, his steely approach to life, and his cool dispatch of the people around him. And as he falls in love with Julia Cadell, an idealistic doctor, he begins to see the world anew. The two run off together to a canal house in the middle of London, where they find a refuge from their perilous lives.
But they can't ignore the real world forever and are soon persuaded to travel to East Timor, where the entire nation has become a war zone. As the militia prepares to sacrifice the lives of hundreds of refugees, Daniel must decide whether to get the story of a lifetime or to see beyond the headlines to the people whose lives are in the balance.
"This touching, elegantly written tale aptly describes love and friendship amid the terror of contemporary war."
-- The Dallas Morning News

• Language: English
• Publisher: 24 West 26th Street Press
• Release date: Dec 15, 2015
• ISBN: 9781630640248

Reviews for The Canal House

[jacketscoversread · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

The Canal House by Mark Lee intrigued me. Lately, I’ve been on a bit of a journalism kick, for example, Forgive Me by Amanda Eyre Ward.I really liked how this book shifted from the point of view of Nicky, the photojournalist, to Julia, the doctor. “But everything was simpler there [at the refugee camp]: you never thought about how you looked and what you should wear, you never had to deal with rush hour and over drafts at your bank, there were no hospital administrators criticizing how much time you spent with a patient. There were so many ambiguities back home, so many compromises. Life was difficult at a refugee camp, but easier too.” {pg. 60}The beginning of this book and the end of this book kept me wanting more. It was the middle I had to trudge through. It was like Lee didn’t know how to move his characters from Africa to Indonesia.It was like time had stop and he was trying to shove as much character information down his readers’ throats before he continued. “When everything is falling apart, look for the man wearing a clean shirt. A clean shirt means he’s either disciplined or resourceful.” {pg. 264}It was good, not quite amazing. But still I liked it.