About Christopher M. Briggs

Chris has a BA in English and Philosophy from the University of Toronto. He is also a graduate of the Humber School for Writers Correspondence Program, where he received a Letter of Distinction on the recommendation of his mentor Richard Bausch. Other authors Chris has worked with include Susan Swan, Helen Humphreys, and Dennis Bock from the University of Toronto’s School of Continuing Studies Creative Writing program. He resides in Scarborough and works in Toronto. Trial is his debut novel.
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From the publisher:
A legacy to defend. A love to rescue. A war that can never be forgotten.
The Currie Libel Trial dominates Canadian headlines for weeks during the spring of 1928. Sir Arthur Currie, Canada’s field commander during World War I, sues the Port Hope Evening Guide for $50,000 over an editorial accusing him of needlessly ordering Canadian soldiers to their death at Mons on the last day of the war. Alfred Simpson, one of Currie’s lawyers, must cope with the preparations for the suit while at the same time trying to deal with his own war injuries – both physical and mental – that still afflict him. Sarah Simpson, his wife, despairs of ever regaining the love that she and Alfred once shared. In her loneliness and fear, she is driven into the arms of another man.
In a rural Ontario courtroom, the Great War is about to be re-fought, the generals second-guessed. The court becomes a microcosm reflecting the fate of an entire generation. The trial by jury becomes a trial by fire.
Praise
“Trial deftly and with great urgency recreates one of Canada’s most sensational and morally ambiguous courtroom battles as it examines themes of duty in wartime and in matrimony, humanizes the tragedy of the Great War, and renders 1920s Toronto in vivid relief. Briggs’ prose is sharp and lively.”
Dennis Bock, author
“Christopher M. Briggs is a natural storyteller, vividly recreating the bloody battlefields of Vimy Ridge and Passchendale in 1917 and the tension-filled courtroom in Cobourg, Ontario in 1928.”
Ann Y.K. Choi, author
“Briggs provides an intimate look into the internal demons of PTSD while taking the reader through an engaging recount of the final 100 days of the Canadians in the First World War.”
Colonel Jay Claggett, commander of 32 Canadian Brigade Group