The award-winning author James FitzGerald discusses his memoir Dreaming Sally: A True Story of First Love, Sudden Death and Long Shadows (Random House, 2018), with Joseph Planta.

Dreaming Sally: A True Story of First Love, Sudden Death and Long Shadows by James FitzGerald (Random House, 2018). Click to buy this book from Amazon.ca: Dreaming Sally

Text of introduction by Joseph Planta:

I am Planta: On the Line, in Vancouver, at TheCommentary.ca.

One of the more remarkable memoirs this season, one of the highly anticipated books of the fall is Dreaming Sally: A True Story of First Love, Sudden Death and Long Shadows, by the author James FitzGerald, who joins me now. In 1968, fifty years ago this past summer, FitzGerald was part of a group of young high school graduates off to Europe for a tour. The Odyssey was the outfit that brought the scions of wealthy and/or prominent families from Toronto to the continent. FitzGerald, the son of a well-heeled Toronto doctor, whose father was also the same, is 17 years old, and feeling lucky when a girl he’s had a crush on is in the same travelling party. Sally, 18, has a boyfriend in Toronto, an older fellow by a couple of years, that warns her not to go to Europe. He tells her she will die. The boyfriend in Toronto is George Orr, who would later go on to become a noted journalist and educator, someone who’s been on this program many times before; who’s a good friend of mine. Even though they’re separated by the Atlantic, George and Sally maintain a correspondence, a lot of which is in this book. You see young love, obsession, as well as the making of promises unfulfilled. I’ll get James to tell us what happened, about Sally’s life that was cut short, his affection of her, all the while she had a beau in Canada. Her death shapes both James and George’s lives in uniquely fascinating, even fantastic ways. The exploration of the pressures of parents, the society in which these two guys grew up in and how they rebelled as they came of age in 1968, make for such a compelling book. James FitzGerald is the award-winning author of Old Boys: the Powerful Legacy of Upper Canada College, and What Disturbs Our Blood: A Son’s Quest to Redeem the Past, which received the 2010 Writers’s Trust Non-Fiction Prize. Visit www.jamesfitzgerald.ca for more information. I intend to have George on this program shortly. And on Tuesday, 20 November 2018, I’ll be speaking with James and George at an event celebrating the book at Massy Books here in Vancouver. The event is at 7pm and is free. This book is published by Random House. Please welcome to the Planta: On the Line program, James FitzGerald; Mr. FitzGerald, good morning.

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