Product Description
A 2000 Torgi Award winner, Always Give a Penny to a Blind Man is a charming and engaging memoir about growing up poor in an English working-class family during the Depression. Wright was born into a family of ten children. His father was a carter who drove horses and his mother worked as a tailoress. With no hot water, baths once a week and often short of food, life was hard but the family got by with resourcefulness and tenacity. Wright was able to win a scholarship and this enabled him to get an education which eventually helped him rise above his circumstances. After working in 1950s England, he decided to emigrate to Canada. The story culminates with his experiences as a young man working in the Canadian North. A superbly written memoir, Always Give a Penny to a Blind Man paints invaluable portraits of British working-class life and the quintessential Canadian immigrant experience, circa the 1950s. Originally published in hardcover in 1999.
About the Author
Eric Wright was born in London in 1929 and emigrated to Canada in 1951. He has written fifteen detective novels, notably the Charlie Salter series. His first novel won the John Creasy Award for the best first crime novel in England, and he has since won four Arthur Ellis awards for crime writing, as well as a City of Toronto Award. He is married with two daughters and makes his home in Toronto.