New from DC Books
A Memoir by Keith Henderson
Overflow: a literary and political autobiography
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Overflow
From a dual perspective, Overflow examines the notion of expatriation. The first involves American novelist Edith Wharton who for personal reasons, spent the last decades of her life in France. The second features Henderson’s own works and his progressive disenchantment with Canada’s pernicious tolerance of ethnocentric nationalism in his native province of Quebec.
As leader of Quebec’s small Equality Party at the time of the second referendum, Henderson helped spearhead moves toward the adoption of the Clarity Act. In recent years, he has participated in the founding of the Canadian Party of Quebec. In the face of illegal, backdoor separatist constitutional amendments and pre-emptive invocations of Canada’s Notwithstanding Clause, Henderson has pushed for the use of Ottawa’s power of Disallowance.
Critical Comment
“In Overflow, Montreal teacher, writer, publisher, and political activist Keith Henderson reminds readers there are encounters that shape the kind of men and women we become: those with our parents, our lovers, our country, as well as those with the books we read (in his case, Edith Wharton’s novel The Age of Innocence) and with the ones we would write.
Henderson’s memoir is his account of putting himself together again (and again), with a hint of guidance as to how we might do the same for ourselves, following life encounters that can make us, break us, and reframe us. The emotional turmoil of Wharton’s lead characters in The Age of Innocence (memorably adapted to film by Martin Scorsese in 1993) reflect Henderson’s own personal and public journey. A century and more separates his book from hers; what links them is their attempt to understand the nature of innocence and the precise moment it is lost to us.
Overflow is also an account of why Henderson has written the books he’s written – novels, story collections, and essays – over the last forty years of committed literary and political productivity. This may be in the hopes of not being found wanting, or to be as inspiring to another writer as Edith Wharton and her life’s work have been to him in gathering his thoughts.
Henderson claims to be choosing self-exile after all these years, increasingly retreating to his wife’s Italian family home and into his own work. He claims to be done with Quebec, Canada, and all of their divisive “politricks.” What keeps showing up in Overflow is an enduring love for his province and country of birth, and for the kind of literature and art engagés that may yet sustain both.”
– Robert Edison Sandiford, author of And Sometime They Fly and Fairfield: The Last Sad Stories of G. Brandon Sisnett
Author Keith Henderson
Author Biography
Keith Henderson has published six novels with DC Books, The Restoration (1992), The Beekeeper (1990), The Roof Walkers (2013), Acqua Sacra (2016), Sasquatch and the Green Sash (2018), and Mont Babel (2020), political essays from when he was Quebec correspondent for the Financial Post (Staying Canadian,1997), as well as a prize- winning book of short stories (The Pagan Nuptials of Julia, 2006). He led the Equality Party during the separatist referendum of 1995, taught Canadian Literature at Vanier College for many years, has sat on numerous boards in Anglo-Quebec including ELAN and the AELAQ, and is currently President of The Special Committee for Canadian Unity.
Overflow, Keith Henderson, 209 pp., 5.5 x 8.5, Memoir, September, 2026
ISBN: 978-1-927599-64-8 (paper) . . . $21.95
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