He’s written 12 books in a Canadian Battles Series, the latest of which is nominated for a national non-fiction writing award.
Now Victoria author Mark Zuehlke’s newest title in the series, The Cinderella Campaign: First Canadian Army and the Battles for the Channel Ports (Douglas & McIntyre), has been shortlisted for the 2018 John W. Dafoe Book Prize.
Zuehlke is one of five authors nominated for the prestigious award, which is presented in memory of Canadian editor John Wesley Dafoe and accompanied by a $10,000 prize. The Cinderella Campaign details the First Canadian Army’s urgent and thankless mission of opening the Channel ports and paving the way for an Allied victory in the Second World War.
A prolific military historian and writer who also writes mystery novels, Zuehlke won the Victoria Butler Book Prize in 2006 for Holding Juno and in 2014 he was presented with the Governor General’s History Award for Popular Media, also known as the Pierre Berton Award. His first novel, Hands Like Clouds, won him the 2000 Arthur Ellis Award for Best First Novel.
The other four shortlisted titles for the Dafoe Book Prize are Vimy: The Battle and the Legend by Tim Cook (Penguin Group Canada), Unbuttoned: The History of Mackenzie King’s Secret Life by Christopher Dummitt (McGill-Queen’s Press), Dead Reckoning: The Untold Story of the Northwest Passage by Ken McGoogan (HarperCollins), and Seven Fallen Feathers by Tanya Talaga (House of Anansi Press).
The winner will be announced this spring and be awarded the prize at the J.W. Dafoe Foundation’s annual Book Prize dinner in May.