Join us in congratulating author Leo McKay Jr.’s nomination to The Canada Reads 2024 Longlist!
The announcement included What Comes Echoing Back, among 15 other titles by Canadian authors. The five books that the panelists choose to champion will be revealed on January 11, 2024. The great Canadian book debates takes place March 4-7, with the prize being presented to the winner after.
The panelists are looking for one book to carry us forward. “When we are at a crossroads, when uncertainty is upon us, when we have faced challenges and are ready for the future, how do we know where to go next? This collection of books is about finding the resilience and the hope needed to carry on and keep moving forward.” —CBC Canada Reads website.
CDN Pub Date: June 6, 2023
To contact author, please reach out to;
Christina Marquette, Atlantic Publicist
902-455-4286 x 226; cmarquette@nimbus.ca
A poignant novel imbued with music from the Giller Prize–shortlisted author of Like This and Twenty-Six that follows two social outcasts as they navigate their traumatic pasts.
The worst moment of Sam’s life was captured on video and shared across the internet for all to gawk at. This is something she has in common with Robot, who just wants to move past the mistakes he’s made, if only his small town will let him. When the two meet in a high school music class, they start to find their way to each other. Music might offer a way not only forward, but forward together, if Sam and Robot can overcome the echoes of the moments that made them infamous.
The past reverberates in ways we don’t expect in this new novel by Giller Prize–shortlisted author Leo McKay Jr. From family secrets and old relationships that resurface, to the tape loops that endlessly replay private moments of trauma and despair, What Comes Echoing Back travels back and forth in time to get to what’s true, with humour, humanity, and the healing power of music.
Leo McKay Jr.’s best known book is the novel Twenty-six, which Canada Reads named one of the forty most important Canadian books of the first decade of the century. It won the Dartmouth Book Award and was chosen for the One Book Nova Scotia event. His debut collection of stories, Like This, also won the Dartmouth Book Award, and was a finalist for the Giller Prize. He lives in Mi’kma’ki, the unceded, ancestral home of the Mi’kmaw people, where he has been a high school teacher for almost thirty years.
“The heaviest lifting here is done by healing. Music flexes its universal healing power, massaging broken hearts with stories that go beyond words to uplift us…. McKay Jr, who is a high school English teacher, shows his deep understanding of the complicated lives of young people, how askew they can be set, how vulnerable they are to anonymous yet known forces online, and how it takes a whole lot of people—professionals and families and friends—and a whole lot of inner strength to work their way back on course.”–Atlantic Books Today
“In What Comes Echoing Back, McKay Jr. takes readers back and forth in time to reveal the truth about what happened in Sam and Robot’s lives. He does this with humour and sensitivity. Throughout the story, he interweaves ideas of how things can echo and reverberate in our lives and the healing power of music.” —ALLISON LAWLER, Columnist, Saltwire
“At its core, What Comes Echoing Back tells a relatively straightforward tale of two damaged, vulnerable people struggling to build a connection following life-altering trauma. It leaves us wondering not only where their lives will take them next, but also questioning the forces at work in a world that seems to offer no defence against the malicious exploitation of technology that has the power to destroy innocent lives with a keystroke. A note of caution: it’s possible the depictions of violence and alcohol addiction in this novel could be triggering for some readers. Rest assured that Leo McKay’s treatment of this difficult material is unfailingly engaging and honest.” –Ian Colford, The Miramichi Reader
“The story unspools slowly, moving back and forth in time and in between the two characters. It’s a testament to McKay’s craftsmanship that this transpires seamlessly. Slowly the tension builds as we reach the pivotal moment in each of their backstories. These sections, leading up to the horrible events that will scar their lives forever, are astounding.… [A] fine novel.” –Broken Pencil magazine
“Leo McKay Jr. writes contemporary novels that read like classics pulled off the shelf of favourites. I’m in awe, simultaneously heartbroken and uplifted with a quiet sort of courage. He really is the bard of the underdog. McKay is a brilliant storyteller. What Comes Echoing Back is compelling, captivating and expertly crafted, a novel heralding the return of an essential voice in Canadian literature.” —CHRISTY-ANN CONLIN, author of The Speed of Mercy
“This is Leo McKay Jr. at his best: furious, funny, wise, and powered by profound empathy. No writer cares for their characters more. On one level, this is a hard contemporary story about the toxic mix of technology and violence in today’s high schools, but at another, deeper level, it is also a hymn to the healing power of art. Listen to What Comes Echoing Back. It’s one of those tender, beautiful songs that you already know, but need to hear again and again.” —ALEXANDER MACLEOD, author of Animal Person
“Leo McKay, as ever, writes with depth and tender insight. This story of two young people caught up in a violent online vortex is timely, heartbreaking and completely inspiring.”—LYNN COADY, author of Watching You Without Me
What Comes Echoing Back
By Leo McKay Jr.
Published by Vagrant Press
$23.95 CAN; $19.95 US | contemporary fiction
978-1-77471-166-8, (eBook) 978-1-77471-167-5
5.5 x 8.5 | 280 pages | paper