Skip to content

Author has touches of Weyburn in new novel

Author and illustrator Craig Terlson launched his new literary young adult novel, Fall in One Day, which combines the true history of government LSD testing in the 1950s with a coming-of-age tale that takes place two decades later.

Author and illustrator Craig Terlson launched his new literary young adult novel, Fall in One Day, which combines the true history of government LSD testing in the 1950s with a coming-of-age tale that takes place two decades later.

Terlson, who grew up in Weyburn and has two sisters still living in the city, will do a reading from his new book at the Weyburn Public Library on Tuesday, July 11, at 7 p.m.

Fall in One Day tells the story of 15-year-old Joe Beck, who enlists his older brother and their DJ stoner friend to plan a rescue when his best friend Brian goes missing. In 1973, a time of a subversive drug culture, changing social roles, and Watergate, Joe sees that adults don’t always tell the truth, and knows that if Brian is going to be found, it’s up to him. With the unflinching honesty of a teenager’s-eye view, Joe learns how trust is betrayed, and the truth, even if it hurts, has to be uncovered.

Fall in One Day was inspired by Terlson’s childhood in Weyburn, where LSD therapy was first conducted at the Saskatchewan Hospital. Later Terlson worked at that same hospital, and met some of the nurses who were there during the late 1950s and 60s. 

A fascination with the shifting politics of the 1970s and events such as Watergate and the Haight Ashbury movement led to the story of a 15-year-old searching for what is true, within his family and within his world. 

The historical backdrop of the novel is the LSD therapy that took place at the Weyburn Mental Hospital in the 1950s, led by Dr. Humphrey Osmond. “There’s a lot of ‘Weyburn’ in the novel, even though ‘Garsen’ is a fictional city, but certainly when I write of a hockey rink, I think of the Weyburn Colosseum, as well as other places in Weyburn, like the library where I spent many hours as a youth,” he said.

“Growing up, I saw these politicians on TV lying to stay out of jail, and I remember wondering who else out there wasn’t telling the truth,” said Terlson. “At the same time, many movies from the 1970s dealt with some sort of conspiracy, and I was fascinated by the hidden stories.”

When asked what books Fall in One Day might be compared to, Terlson says that he thought of Richard Ford’s Wildlife, or Canada, his recent book, which featured a teenage protagonist. As well, stories by Guy Vanderhaeghe, notably Things as They Are? and Daddy Lenin, or I Am the Messenger by Markus Zusak, draw comparisons. The Netflix series Stranger Things also evokes the plot of a missing boy and his young friends searching for answers.