The cinematic sequel to a Sunshine Coast novelist’s dynastic story explores the human dimensions of world conflict, set against a momentous era in the Pacific Northwest.
Writer Ken Budd — whose own colourful history includes service as a teacher, counsellor, and nonfiction author — is the creator of the newly-released No Cowards.
The book continues the muscular tale (begun in 2023’s No Killers) of two male scions of the McKittrick farming family. Each one experiences the Second World War from decidedly different vantage points. Overshadowed by the overseas heroism of his elder brother, Jedidiah (the sanguine, redheaded protagonist) endures rejection by both U.S. and Canadian air forces.
No Cowards leaps forward a generation into the age of the Vietnam conflict. Jedidiah’s life has once again been touched by tragedy: one of his identical twin sons died by drowning at the age of six. The survivor, Jacob, grows into young adulthood.
While enrolled at the University of Washington, Jacob grapples with the fact of America’s military involvement in Indochina, and the civil rights movement. An unexpected revelation about one of his father’s early amorous entanglements (while stationed on Vancouver Island in wartime) leads to Jacob making a surreptitious dash northward across the border.
The story is lush in detail, culled from the lived experience of its author. In 1969, at the height of the Vietnam War, Alberta-born Budd was a graduate student in Seattle. “Every day there was a protest and there were bombings,” he recalled in an interview with Coast Reporter. “I realized two weeks before I had to have my thesis handed in that my visa from the United States government allowed them to use me in the draft. I hadn’t read the fine print. So I grabbed my piece of paper, got the hell out of Dodge, and came back to Canada.”
The next spring, he was living and teaching in Tofino where he met a draft dodger living on the beach. The two began a conversation. The dodger had parked his van near an old World War II installation.
“And that’s what brought the whole idea together about dichotomies of belief,” said Budd, “with one young desperately wanting to get into a war so he could kill some Germans, and then a generation later, his son saying, ‘I don’t want any part of a war.’”
Budd’s prose is vivid and visceral, both when describing the topography of family dynamics and the geographies of Washington and coastal British Columbia. The land itself infuses his tale with mythic qualities evocative of two of his personal literary icons: Jack Hodgins and W.O. Mitchell.
“I was in Banff [at the Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity] studying with W.O.,” he recalled, “and part of his mantra was that what it means to be a good writer is to write what you know.”
During a writing retreat in Roberts Creek, he plotted the entire McKittrick family saga using long rolls of shelf paper. The process reawakened memories of his Alberta youth, halcyon days spent running through the countryside with his black Labrador Retriever and pulling potatoes to earn money spent on shotgun shells for pheasant hunting with his cousins.
“The characters in No Cowards are very much examples of people that I have met and people I’ve loved, or been frustrated by, or angered by, throughout my life,” Budd observed.
Working with his editor (and erstwhile pupil) Robert Marthaller, Budd is exploring the possibility of a screenplay based on the McKittrick books. Research for a third volume is underway, which will depict another generation’s struggles with manly stereotypes, cultural identity, and romantic impulses beside the restless Pacific.
No Cowards by Ken Budd is available for purchase from Talewind Books in Sechelt and online retailers.
