Spaner

Jake’s life is shaped by the Spanish Civil War and the not-so-civil wars that go on within families and intimate relationships. With wit and originality, David Spaner does for Vancouver what writers like Mordecai Richler and Philip Roth did for Montreal and Newark. Jake Feldman grows up on Keefer Street in the dynamic working-class immigrant neighbourhood of Strathcona in Vancouver. This is the first novel to bring to life the vibrancy of Strathcona and its largely Jewish Keefer Street. Jake’s left-wing, rabble-rousing street politics of his youth eventually lead him to leave Depression-era Vancouver to join the international volunteers fighting fascism in the Spanish Civil War. But his return home is unheralded and his idealism is worn down by the mundaneness of everyday life and family conflict. But fifty years later, he recaptures the passion of his youth during a reunion of civil war volunteers in Spain. Keefer Street explores how to preserve your idealism in order to live a life of purpose.

David Spaner has been a feature writer, movie critic, reporter, and editor for newspapers and magazines. Born in Toronto, raised in BC, David is a graduate of Simon Fraser University. He was a cultural/ political organizer (Yippie and manager of the legendary punk band The Subhumans). He is the author of Dreaming in the Rain: How Vancouver Became Hollywood North By Northwest and Shoot It! Hollywood Inc. and the Rising of Independent Film. His most recent book, Solidarity: Canada’s Unknown Revolution of 1983, was nominated for the George Ryga Prize for Social Awareness in Literature.