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When Sirens Beckon

By: Shane Joseph

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Paperback | 1 October 2026

At a Glance

Paperback
282 Pages

Dimensions(cm)
22.86 x 15.24 x 1.5

Paperback

$38.49

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Martin James has spent forty years perfecting the art of leaving Sri Lanka behind. A successful realtor in small-town Ontario, he has built a new family, a comfortable life, and a careful distance from the country that shaped and scarred him. But when his daughter's wedding brings him back to Colombo in April 2019, he finds a place caught between its old wounds and new ones - the civil war over, but the hatreds merely rearranged.

When the Easter Sunday bombings shatter everything he came to celebrate, Martin is left with two urns, a grief he cannot metabolize, and a conscience he cannot quiet. Back in Canada, his business collapses around him. In Sri Lanka, the son of his closest friend is disappearing into radicalization. And a powerful politician with blood on his hands is about to become president.

Martin knows he should stay home. He has always been better at surviving than at saving anyone.

He goes back anyway.

When Sirens Beckon is a rich, morally urgent novel about the price of belonging - to a country, a family, and an idea of who you might have been. Set against the real events of the 2019 Sri Lankan Easter bombings, it asks whether a man who spent a lifetime running from his past can find redemption by running toward someone else's future.

Industry Reviews

Shane's very much a serious writer, in the Realist tradition, and in the great Western tradition of fiction that addresses meaningful human questions and concerns in a positive way. In my review of another one of his novels, I described the characteristic features of his writing as "lifelike, three-dimensional characterizations, deft realization of setting, appreciation of the beauty of the natural world, sensitivity to multicultural and cross-cultural issues, understanding of the fundamental moral questions of life and the significance of good and evil, and awareness of significant social issues." - Werner A Lind, Librarian, Bluefield University, Virginia, USA.

When Sirens Beckon is an important story for those of us trying to understand world events from fresh perspectives. It connects Canadian values to international populations. One character sums up the theme of belonging that runs deep in this novel. "I know how hard it is to give up the place one considers home. I concluded that home was a state of mind, not a place, and that's when I started to have a sense of peace." - Janet Trull, Author of End of the Road and Canadian Saint.

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This product is categorised by

Fiction Thrillers & Suspense Espionage & Spy Thrillers
Fiction Romance Historical Romance Fiction