LONG CHANGE

The world of oil told through the life and loves of a man determined to build an empire.

Fleeing his violent, Pentecostal father, as well as a crime he committed in the parking lot of the first bar he ever entered, Ritt Devlin leaves Texas at fifteen, crossing the border into Alberta. Big for his age, he soon finds work on an oil rig on the outskirts of Medicine Hat. But that's not the life he wants, and he saves up to study geology. By the time he's in his early twenties he's the head of his own oil company.

Spanning almost 70 years, and following the geology and politics of oil from Texas to the Canadian oil patch, from Nigeria to Equatorial Guinea, from Azerbaijan to the Russian Arctic, Long Change is divided into three parts, each of them framed by one of Ritt's marriages: the first to his great love, Oda, whose sudden death changes the course of his life; the second to Deirdre, an elegant lawyer who helps Ritt expand Mackenzie Oil, but who needs more than business from her marriage; and the third to Alexa, a late middle age fling that descends into tragedy.

Inspired by the summers the author spent working as a roughneck in the oil fields, Long Change is an authentic, moving portrait of a man who is made, and unmade, by oil. Set in a world of tortured politics and corporate intrigue, Long Change introduces readers to an unforgettable character whose life mirrors the whole disastrous trajectory of oil itself.

DON GILLMOR has been praised for his “elegant prose and ability to wring universal truths out of everyday circumstances” (The Globe and Mail) and as “a veteran craftsman whose unsentimental prose aches with poignancy” (Toronto Star). The author of two prior novels: Mount Pleasant (2013, Random House Canada) and Kanata (2009, Viking/Penguin Canada), he is also the author of several works of non-fiction, and his journalism has appeared in Rolling Stone, GQ, Toronto Life, and The Globe and Mail. He lives in Toronto.