From the bestselling author of Firewater comes a moving tribute to
an older brother that traverses the thresholds of memoir, fiction, and
fantasy and reimagines what could have been.
When Harold Johnson returns to his childhood home in a northern
Indigenous community for his brother Clifford's funeral, the first thing
his eyes fall on is a chair. It stands on three legs, the fourth broken
off and missing. So begins a journey through the past, a retrieval of
recollections of his silent, powerful Swedish father; his formidable
Cree mother; and his brother Clifford, a precocious young boy who is
drawn to the mysterious workings of the universe. As the night unfolds,
memories of Clifford surface in Harold's mind's eye. Memory, fiction,
and fantasy collide, and Clifford comes to life as the scientist he was
meant to be, culminating in his discovery of the Grand Unified Theory.
Exquisitely crafted, funny, visionary, and wholly moving, Clifford is an
extraordinary work that embraces myriad forms of storytelling. To read
it is to be immersed in a home, a family, a community, the wider world,
the entire cosmos.