I got a theory a person ought to do everything it’s possible to do before he dies, and maybe die trying to do something that’s really impossible.
—Patricia Highsmith, Author of The Talented Mr. Ripley
When I first conceived Frank Hollister, in November of 2025, I thought I was creating a fictional character who had the job I aspired to as a teen. My heroes at the time were Pierre Berton and Gordon Sinclair, both of whom began their careers in journalism at the Toronto Daily Star (the same Torstar where I was employed for my entire career) before becoming nationally acclaimed writers and personalities. Coincidentally, both were also featured panelists on the iconic and long-running CBC show, Front Page Challenge, alongside the beautiful and unforgettable Betty Kennedy. Sinclair notoriously asked every guest on the show how much money they earned.
I wanted Hollister to represent the adventurist journalist I knew I had hiding inside me, whether it was searching for cannibals in Southeast Asia like Sinclair or exploring the Klondike like Berton. That my own career was anything but adventurous- almost 40 years behind a desk or selling advertising- didn’t discourage me from creating a fictional alter-ego.
Because I have been a compulsive journal-keeper for many years, acquaintances told me that I should write a memoir. My candid response is that I have done nothing worthy of being read. What I didn’t anticipate was how much of the real me would eventually seep into Hollister’s character as it developed in my story. I’ll leave it to the reader to speculate on what parts are fiction and which are based on my own experiences.
Hollister walks around with a chip on his shoulder. He resents that the skills he learned and mastered over 35 years as a print journalist have little value in today’s world. He mourns the death of serious journalism, in particular local journalism. At a time when information- any information- is simply a few keystrokes away, he believes we are starving for access to the right information. Information that tells us about what is happening in our own backyards without hyperbole or opinion. Hollister comes from a time when journalists were local experts who mined their relationships and conducted research to uncover the story behind the story.
He retired, with regret, prepared to live out the rest of his life in obscurity. Almost a lose-leave response to his life up to that point.
Like so many of our generation, Hollister resents change, even when he understands that it is inevitable. He mourns the loss of institutions like Ryerson Polytechnic and the Dundas Street stop on the subway. He can’t understand the fashion choices of today’s youth, and he stopped listening to modern music sometime in the 80’s. He regards all new things with a degree of cynicism.
He worries that his drinking may be out of control and he goes to bed at the sensible hour of 9:00 each night.
When he was younger, he married a woman for all the wrong reasons.
He finds it hard to make new friends and relies on the few old ones for companionship. He considers himself a failure at relationships and stopped trying.
Yet despite this, Hollister is an optimist. He’s loyal. And he’s curious. Deep down, while he knows the world is screwed up, he continues to believe that he can still make a difference. It’s not enough to know that something is. He wants to understand why it is. It’s that quality that made him a good journalist and now, it’s that quality that drives him to solve mysteries others can’t.
When I retired, I worried that I would not be able to find a new purpose in life. A wise former boss told me not to worry. Purpose would find me. He was right. I spent the first twelve years of my retirement buying and restoring abandoned properties in Northeast Missouri while trying to provide leadership in a community that had lost many of theirs to the big cities.
In November of 2025, while visiting friends in the USA for American Thanksgiving, knowing how much I treasure his books, my husband Wesley bought me a copy of Lee Child’s compendium of essays called Jack Reacher.
After finishing it, I was inspired to invent my own unique character. Surprisingly, once I created a picture of Frank Hollister in my mind and invented a problem for him to investigate, the story almost wrote itself. I approached each chapter and each challenge the way that I felt I would, given the same circumstances.
After writing a chapter a day for the first month or so, we left for two weeks in Paris at the beginning of January, 2026. Somehow, the city inspired me even more and I finished the first draft while sitting in the salon of a 17th century apartment in Montmartre. By the time we arrived back in Toronto, I had finished the manuscript.
Like Hollister, purpose found me in ways that I could never have anticipated. Now, as I live through my character, I know that he will continue to seek justice for the forgotten and try to right things that are wrong. Or, perhaps, he will die trying.