Dennis E. Bolen
July 04th, 2025
In Amaranthine Chevrolet (Dundurn Press $25.99), Dennis E. Bolen revisits a familiar narrative form, the journey through the eyes of a fifteen-year-old boy navigating a fractured country during Canada’s centennial year. Robin Wallenco sets off from Saskatchewan behind the wheel of a 1942 Chevrolet pickup, travelling west through farmland and backroads in an effort to avoid the police (because he’s too young to have a driver’s license) and reach Vancouver Island. Along the way, he encounters a changing landscape and an equally shifting society: draft dodgers, utopian hippie camps, marijuana growers and small-town philosophers. Much more than a road trip, the novel becomes a meditation on youth, estrangement and transformation. Bolen is a novelist, editor, teacher and journalist, first published in 1975. 9781459754775
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