Finalist, ReLit Award

Amazon.ca's 50 Essential Canadian Books selection

First published in 1997 to much critical acclaim, Salvage King, Ya! is a novel firmly rooted in Canada’s favourite national pastime—hockey. Critics have called Salvage King, Ya! “the great Canadian novel,” and a “postmodern Canadian classic.” Drinkwater, Jarman’s narrator, is the “heir reluctant” of the family business (the salvage company of the book’s title) and an aspiring NHL defenceman. His life hurtles between the hockey rink, the junkyard, the road, and the three women in his life: The Intended, the mesmerizing Waitress X, and ex-wife Kathy.

An Everyman, Drinkwater is approaching mid-life acutely aware of the choices and options available to him—and the ones that are slowly slipping from his reach. Fast-paced, raucous and kinetically charged, Salvage, King, Ya! is a hockey novel bursting with dynamism and originality. This is the “breakthrough” novel from the author of the short story collections 19 Knives, New Orleans Is Sinking, Dancing Nightly in the Tavern, and the memoir Ireland’s Eye. Salvage King, Ya! is a roving, luminous, rowdy, and funny novel.

Praise for Salvage King, Ya!:

“if it’s the best hockey book ever written, does that make it The Great Canadian Novel?” (The Danforth Review)

“a brilliant work . . . a postmodern Canadian classic” (National Post)

“a wonderfully fierce and funny book . . . imagine Hunter S. Thompson on hockey skates” (Vancouver Sun)