BookView Review

Durivage kickstarts The Fletcher Clan Series with a gritty tale of ambition, corruption, and betrayal set in 1970s Gatineau.  Not yet twenty, Ernest McCloskey turns his back on the security of his parents’ world to pursue the risky dream of a real estate empire. He succeeds, but his rapid rise comes at the cost of a partnership with Alejandro Prince, a charming opportunist who flourishes in the shadows of commerce and corruption.  As he’s pulled into union wars, political corruption, and the mafia’s grip, violence stalks his worksites, and with his empire near collapse, he must choose between power and humanity.

Durivage draws a vivid world of a young man’s rise in an industry where union thugs wield baseball bats, organized crime hovers at the edges of construction sites, and government subsidies are brokered through bribes. Ernest’s world is one of constant pressure: workers intimidated, materials stolen, inspectors bought off, and financiers waiting to collect. Jeannette is a stabilizing force as well a moral counterweight, her loyalty and intelligence contrasting sharply with Alejandro’s opportunism. 

The story resonates not merely because of the external dangers but because of the quiet decay inside Ernest.  A once determined dreamer who labored beside his men, he comes to equate loyalty with naiveté and betrayal with to survival. Durivage’s clipped, unsentimental prose captures this transformation with a sense of inevitability. A dark, engrossing start to a family saga, this is a study in how ambition, unchecked, corrodes everything it touches. A stunner.

***