Roy MacSkimming's latest novel, Macdonald, recreates the final days of Sir John A. Macdonald, Canada's colourful and indomitable first Prime Minister. The Globe & Mail has called it "[an] engaging novel handled with imagination, sympathy and verve, making a hugely enjoyable read." Novelist Nino Ricci states, “Roy MacSkimming does for Macdonald what the history books have failed to do. He not only brings him to life, he brings him into our hearts.” MacSkimming's previous non-fiction book, The Perilous Trade: Publishing Canada's Writers, was a Maclean's bestseller, a Globe & Mail Best 100 book of the year and a finalist for the 2003 National Business Book Award, and has been reissued in an updated paperback edition. MacSkimming has published two other novels, Formentera and Out of Love, both translated into French. He has also written an unauthorized biography of hockey legend Gordie Howe and a reassessment of the epochal 1972 Canada-Soviet hockey series. A native of Ottawa, MacSkimming co-founded New Press in 1969. He has been books editor and literary columnist at The Toronto Star, an official with the Canada Council for the Arts, and policy director of the Association of Canadian Publishers. He lives in the country near Perth, Ontario.
