William Adolphus Turnpike

Toronto, 1913. The city hums with new arrivals from every corner of the globe, and seventeen-year-old William Adolphus Turnpike is about to plunge into its chaos. Fresh from a politically charged hall where his father holds forth with spectacularly misguided opinions for all to hear, William takes his first steps into the adult world as an office boy, determined, sharp-eyed, and absolutely convinced he knows more than he does. What follows is a vivid portrait of a young man carving out his place in a city that refuses to stand still, where every clerk and streetcar conductor becomes a character in his growing education. Banks writes with an irreverent energy that recalls Dickens at his most playful, but grounded in the specific texture of early-century Toronto: its immigrant neighborhoods, its class distinctions, its nervous energy about modernity. William is by turns insufferable and lovable, a boy who sees everything and understands too little, and whose very certainty makes him the perfect lens for a city discovering itself.