TORONTO - A graphic book about the complex relationships between Canadian politicians, commanders and ordinary soldiers during the First World War nabbed the $25,000 Charles Taylor Prize for literary non-fiction on Monday.
"Shock Troops: Canadians Fighting the Great War, 1917-1918 Volume Two" by Ottawa historian Tim Cook includes harrowing tales from the combatants.
Cook, a curator at the Canadian War Museum, said he gleaned the stories from tens of thousands of soldiers' letters held at the museum and also at the Library and Archives Canada.
"I've spent years in the archives reading through the official documents, the official reports, casualty reports, trying to build the history up from the foundation," said Cook, 37, who is also an adjunct professor at Carleton University.
"But it's the voices of the soldiers - the voices from their letters, their diaries and memoirs - that's what brings the history alive and these of course were eyewitnesses to history.
"The letters I was reading, many of them were from soldiers who did not survive the war."
The win caps off about a decade of exhaustive research and writing Cook did for the two-volume history on Canada in the First World War, a period of history he's been "fascinated and maybe haunted by ... for many years," he said.
During those 10 years, he also had three daughters with his wife, Sarah Klotz, to whom he plans to give his prize money for all her patience, he noted.
"I wrote these books on weekends and in the mornings and at night and when my daughter, Emma, was born, we waited a week and I had begun writing again," said Cook, whose daughters are all under the age of five.
"She would be up at five in the morning feeding and I would be waking up writing these books, so all of the money certainly should go to Sarah, and she will decide what to do with it."
Their youngest child, Paige, is just four months old, and Cook said he was changing her diapers in their living room in Ottawa when he heard the news that he was shortlisted for the prize last month.
"I nearly dropped her when I heard (the news)," said Cook, who is now working on a double-biography of Sir Arthur Currie and Sir Samuel Hughes, two pivotal military figures from the First World War.
Two other authors were shortlisted for this year's prize: Elizabeth Abbott for "Sugar: A Bittersweet History" and Ana Siljak for "Angel of Vengeance: The 'Girl Assassin."'
The runners-up each receive $2,000.
Jury members Warren Cariou, Jeffrey Simpson and Shirley Thomson praised Cook's book for its "tremendous detail and almost unstoppable narrative momentum."
Cook hopes his win will "get the word out on non-fiction," and also about the Great War.
"I think we need to understand our past and its complexity and its nuances and there are some very hard passages in these books - some awful things happened to Canadians in the Great War - but we need to know that," he said.
"We need to understand our history with all the bruises there, with all the hard parts left in. If we don't, I'm not sure what we're learning."
The prize is named for the late journalist Charles Taylor. Last year's award went to Richard Gwyn for "John A.: The Man Who Made Us: The Life and Times of John A. Macdonald, Volume One: 1815-1867."
