Cover

Title Page

Copyright

PUBLISHED BY ALFRED A. KNOPF CANADA

Copyright © 2017 Kathleen Winter

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer, who may quote brief passages in a review. Published in 2017 by Alfred A. Knopf Canada, a division of Penguin Random House Canada Limited. Distributed in Canada by Penguin Random House Canada Limited, Toronto.

Alfred A. Knopf Canada and colophon are registered trademarks.

Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication

Winter, Kathleen, author

Lost in September / Kathleen Winter.

Issued in print and electronic formats.

ISBN 9780345810120

eBook ISBN 9780345810144

I. Title.

PS8595.I618L67 2017  C813′.54  C2017-900883-8

Book design by Jennifer Griffiths

Cover and interior illustrations by Jennifer Griffiths

v4.1

a

Dedication

For my mother,

who has always loved dogs

Epigraph

I know,

I know and you know, we knew,

we did not know, we

were there, after all, and not there

and at times when

only the void stood between us we got

all the way to each other.

PAUL CELAN

JANUARY 2, 2018

SAINT ALFEGE CHURCH

GREENWICH, LONDON

UNITED KINGDOM

Dear James Wolfe,

I wanted to write this book in time for your birthday. Silly, I know, but why not place it on your grave here at Saint Alfege on this day that celebrates your life? That is, after all, what I have tried to do in these pages. Forgive me if I have not entirely succeeded. Try to see my intent. I don’t mean to complain, but you gave me no choice except to look for traces of you in unexpected streets, in modern places as well as old haunts. How else was I able to find what you dearly wanted me to know? For I have, dear James, heard you whispering to me at night in the park, or by day in libraries, and in the voices of people I have met while on your trail. And I believe with all my heart that you wanted me to meet a certain representative of yours—that you placed him in my path, so that he might hand me your message directly.

Still, though I listened as carefully as I could, I don’t know how you will feel about my rendition of you.

I have come to know a James Wolfe who does not appear in the historical reports of your military strategy, nor in accounts of your siege of Quebec. In those tales, you always wear the same red costume and sustain one aim, which can be boiled down to a sentence: In September 1759 he took Quebec for the British, and with that victory, achieved in fifteen short minutes of battle, forever changed the course of history, ensuring that Canada would be British and not French.