I WAS THERE THE NIGHT HE DIED

A highly cinematic novel exploring one man's recovery from addiction and loss through the friendship he develops with an 18-year old girl where they share the rejuvenating power of music.

When Sam Samson returns to his hometown to assist with the institutionalization of his Alzheimer's-stricken father, familial-obligations aren't the only grief he has to cope with. His mother dead of a stroke the year before his father began to first exhibit signs of his disease, his wife of nearly twenty years killed eighteen months previous in a car crash, himself battling a debilitating drug habit, it's also recently been discovered that his only living relative, his father's brother, has been stealing his ailing brother's pension checks to support his escalating gambling debts. Living in and readying his parents' empty house for sale, Sam makes the acquaintance of Samantha, the eighteen year-old girl living across the street, who uses the small park located next door to Sam's parents' house in which to smoke marijuana late at night and who, it turns out, is a chronic self-injurer. Slowly, during nightly smoke-fests, the two build up a strong bond based on their mutual loneliness and love of music. RAY ROBERTSON is the author of six novels—Home Movies, Heroes, Moody Food, Gently Down the Stream, What Happened Later, and David—as well as two collections of non-fiction, Mental Hygiene: Essays on Writers and Writing and, most recently, Why Not? Fifteen Reasons to Live, which was short-listed for the Hillary Weston Writers Trust Prize for Non-Fiction, long-listed for the Charles Taylor Prize for Non-Fiction, and was a Globe and Mail Best Book of 2011.