The golden boy, p.30
The Golden Boy, page 30
Author’s Note
Steven Truscott’s encounter with Stafford Hopkins and Bobby Shepherd at Collins Bay Institution is fictional, but the story of Steven Truscott is not. Wrongfully convicted of murder when he was fourteen, Truscott spent ten years in Ontario prisons, including, but not limited to, the farm annex at Collins Bay Institution. Paroled in 1969, Steven Truscott was acquitted in 2007 when the Court of Appeal for Ontario unanimously held that his conviction was a miscarriage of justice.
Acknowledgments
Thank you, Reagan Arthur, Jennifer Lambert, and Hilary McMahon for opening the door. I gave you a story. You gave me a book. A better one, I might add, because of your brilliant notes and editorial guidance. And thank you to your talented colleagues at Cardinal, Grand Central Publishing, HarperCollins Canada, Westwood Creative Artists, and elsewhere, for production editing, marketing, logistics, author support, and that extraordinary book cover. As for the title, thank you, Reagan, for initiating the quest to find the right one, and thank you, Jennifer, for hitting the mark with The Golden Boy.
Thank you, Jack Finn, Laurielle Finn, Hart Hanson, Jennifer Hollyer, John Millikin, Tracy Rogers, and in particular my brother, John Mahon, for reading multiple drafts. Your contributions were diverse and meaningful. Thank you to my literary colleague and friend, Lesley Cameron, for helping me prep the manuscript for submission, and for the many insightful conversations that followed.
And a special thank you to Rob Sanders, founding publisher and CEO of Greystone Books, for introducing me to Hilary McMahon at WCA.
Thank you, Hanson Family, for memories of Kapalua Bay. The idea for this book began on that beach, surrounded, as we were then, by all those little boys. Thank you, JP Finn, for your generosity in sharing memories of a rural boyhood. This book would not have been written without you.
And on a personal note, thank you to my dear friends Andrea, Frankie, Emmy, the little ones waiting in the wings, and to your parents—Thomas and Rityka, Charlie and Ali, and Jack and Laurielle—for making time travel not merely possible but routine.
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About the Author
Patricia Finn is a writer, editor, and ghostwriter. She was educated in Canada and New Zealand, where she took an MA at the University of Canterbury in English and Classics with a focus on Aristotle and Athenian tragedy. Patricia has worked for television networks and production companies in both countries, including CBC and Television New Zealand. She has family roots in Canada and the United States and now lives in British Columbia.
Patricia Finn, The Golden Boy
