Wheat Kings and Pretty Things

By g.s. Wiley

As soon as he graduated high school, Paul Thompson fled the tiny, heavily Ukrainian town of Liddon, Saskatchewan, for bigger and better things. Now in his late thirties, Paul owns a struggling art gallery in Toronto. His grandmother’s one-hundredth birthday is approaching, and Paul will return to place where he grew up for the first time since he left.

The town—and the province—don’t match Paul’s memories. Have they changed? Or has he? He reconnects with Dylan Shevchenko, an old friend who now teaches phys. ed. in Regina. When Paul learns his grandmother had an Aboriginal son he never knew about, he wonders what else he missed while he was away. Did he make the right choice all those years ago? He receives the rare opportunity to start over when he discovers a gallery for sale in Regina. He’s faced with a choice between his youthful dreams in the big city and making a life with Dylan in a place that somehow finally feels like home.

World of Love: Stories of romance that span every corner of the globe.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Dreamspinner Press
• Release date: Aug 9, 2017
• ISBN: 9781635337693

g.s. Wiley

GS Wiley is a writer, reader, teacher and traveller who lives in Canada.Check out http://wileyromance.googlepages.com for more information.

Book preview

Wheat Kings and Pretty Things

By G.S. Wiley

As soon as he graduated high school, Paul Thompson fled the tiny, heavily Ukrainian town of Liddon, Saskatchewan, for bigger and better things. Now in his late thirties, Paul owns a struggling art gallery in Toronto. His grandmother’s one-hundredth birthday is approaching, and Paul will return to place where he grew up for the first time since he left.

The town—and the province—don’t match Paul’s memories. Have they changed? Or has he? He reconnects with Dylan Shevchenko, an old friend who now teaches phys. ed. in Regina. When Paul learns his grandmother had an Aboriginal son he never knew about, he wonders what else he missed while he was away. Did he make the right choice all those years ago? He receives the rare opportunity to start over when he discovers a gallery for sale in Regina. He’s faced with a choice between his youthful dreams in the big city and making a life with Dylan in a place that somehow finally feels like home.

World of Love: Stories of romance that span every corner of the globe.

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THE ENTIRE Liddon High School graduating class of 1997 could fit into the back of a large pickup truck.

They knew this because, after the graduation party at the Legion Hall wrapped up, all eleven of them climbed into the back of Dylan Shevchenko’s dad’s truck. Paul didn’t want to go. His flight to Toronto was already booked, scheduled to leave at ten o’clock the next morning. Even though he wasn’t scheduled to start university for nearly four months, he couldn’t wait any longer to get out of there. But he was jostled along, dragged into the back of the truck before he could turn down the people with whom he’d spent every school day for the past thirteen years.

Dylan drove them out of town, into the bush. The truck was old and woefully in need of new shocks. Paul felt every stone on the dirt road as they jounced along. Daisy McLaughlin’s slippery silk dress rubbed against his arm on one side, while on the other, the stench of Connor Boyko’s overpowering cologne hung like a fug, threatening to asphyxiate them all. Just a few hours, Paul assured himself. A few more hours, and I’m free of all this, forever.

Dylan wasn’t the world’s greatest driver under the best of circumstances. Under these circumstances, in the dead of a dark, rural Saskatchewan night on a road that likely hadn’t been maintained for decades, he was appalling. Paul clung to the side of the truck, his knuckles white and his heart hammering. It would be just my luck, he thought, to die now, so close to freedom.

After what seemed like hours, Dylan pulled off the dirt road onto another, even worse one. This time, it was barely a track, a narrow path with corn growing on each side. The headlights bounced up and down, illuminating the field around them.

Spooky, Daisy said.

Boo! Connor reached across Paul to jab her in the ribs. Daisy squealed, and Paul sighed.

When they reached a little house, Dylan stopped. Connor and another boy, Jake, opened the back of the truck, and they all poured out onto the grass.

This is my uncle’s place, Dylan announced. So don’t fuck anything up.

Paul wasn’t sure how that would be possible. The shack looked like something out of a horror movie. Even by the light of the stars, Paul could tell the paint, where it existed, was peeling badly. The door hung awkwardly on its hinges, and large holes in the bug screens meant they would be useless to keep out any sort of insects, or, for that matter, small mammals. Paul felt like he could catch half-a-dozen illnesses just looking at the place.

There’s beer in the fridge, Dylan continued. To a group of post-grad teenagers, that was like waving a red flag in front of a bull. They rampaged into the shack, squeezing through the narrow door like clowns. Connor and Jake even got stuck, for a moment, straining against one another and the doorframe until they popped through to the inside. Paul was surprised he didn’t hear a comical sound effect, like a bottle uncorking.

Paul and Dylan were the only ones left outside. Nice place, Paul lied, because he had been brought up that way.

It’s a shit hole, Dylan admitted. Paul was glad. They’d known each other for over a decade. While they weren’t exactly friends, Paul had never thought of Dylan as a delusional idiot, although that was precisely how