Publisher's Synopsis
Christian Joyce returns to Montreal a veteran of the Cuban Revolution. He survived but left warm, passionate Esameralda in a convent and has lost Renée again to her New York lover, Ramon, the Castro impersonator. Surviving Well: Montreal 1960 is Book Two of the Christian James Joyce Series. Christian is home after a long journey from the Gulf Coast where he searched the bayous in vain for his dangerous friend Maartyn. It is hot, dirty and densely humid in Montreal and he is broke and alone; his estranged family dispersed. A common vagrant, adrift in the cosmopolitan city he once understood, where the atmosphere and the politics have changed. He survived the bloody Cuban Revolution with a new understanding of violence but in Québec there is more unrest as impatient young Québeçois meet in dark, smoke-filled rooms watching a world in turmoil, aching to become part of the new order forming on college campuses and street corners. Heated rhetoric fuels resentment against their English and Scotish overlords. They want action and leadership. A hero to the young radicals, Christian is lured into the vortex of the fledgling FLQ as the Political Provo and is once again confronted by a cadre of odd and dangerous characters who are seldom what they pretend to be. Christian has become less naïve and more angular since Cuba but the long journey home by train, aged by experience and life lived hard on the margins, have taken their measure. The Quiet Revolution that would ease Québec away from it's rural Catholic heritage is taking place in board rooms of the business elite but on the mean streets there is an undercurrent of anarchy and Christian is about to come face to face with the social upheaval of the 1960's and the fragmented movements that lead inevitably to chaos. He experienced enough chaos and bloodshed in Cuba and now he wants only to be near the cooling waters of the St. Lawrence River, find some peace, rediscover his music and continue his recovery from drugs while he waits for Renée to satisfy her Bohemian cravings. But he is about to meet Breeze, the beautiful cello player with the Outport heritage, who will change his life. In the meantime there is a body lying close to the edge of the broken concrete bulkhead, in danger of rolling into the boiling river. A slight young man, dark and handsome, and dead too young; like Rosa and the young rebels. He remembers all the bodies, the friends and enemies, the young and the old. What does this one mean to his future? He should just walk away...
