Heart Like a Wing

Briony, a prairie girl with a disfigured face, is adopted when she is nine by a childless older couple, Dagget and Moll, who appear mysteriously at her orphanage one day. They take her to their remote town of Crowsbeak in northern Saskatchewan, where Briony struggles to fit in. Tormented by her schoolmates for her scarred face and dark skin, and haunted by nightmares, she takes refuge in Dagget’ s world as a bush pilot in the vast spruce forests, lakes and Native villages of the North. As she flies with her adoptive father in his vintage floatplane, a Norseman, she develops a passionate desire to become a bush pilot too. By age sixteen, she has gained confidence as Dag's co-pilot and also as part of her past comes to light when she discovers that she has a Cree family. But then Briony is forced to question everything she believes when she learns the disturbing truth behind her scar. This edgy coming-of-age story brings Canadian history and northern culture vividly to life as Briony fights to discover her identity and claim her place in the world. The final chapters describe a perilous flight through the Arctic and across the north Atlantic to the Hebrides in the iconic Norseman.

Dan Paxton Dunaway lives by the ocean on the Saanich Peninsula near Victoria, B.C. He is an avid triathlete, having competed three times at Ironman Canada. Heart Like a Wing is the first in a series of young adult novels he is writing. Visit www.danpaxton.ca.