Eric Walters’s plot to help save Canadian society came to him significantly like the plan for a guide — in a flash of inspiration.

It was November 2018, and the Toronto-born writer was driving via the Prairies, frequently on the cellular phone with publishers, fellow writers and other folks in the Canadian literature local community.

“And I was finding this serious feeling of pessimism,” explained Walters. “There have been significantly less publishers publishing significantly less books, and book sales are down. There was a palpable pessimism in all regions.”

But the issue was not essentially men and women reading through