Searching for Terry Punchout

“Searching for Terry Punchout is a funny, profane, charming romp of a novel about hockey culture in small-town Canada, which would be enough to recommend it on its own. But it’s also an engaging and insightful look at the way men try and mostly fail to be honest and emotional in their relationships with other men, and that makes it a must-read.”—Chris Turner, author of The Patch and The Geography of Hope

“Tyler Hellard has created a thoughtful, warm-hearted, and deeply human sports tale, one that will resonate with any reader who has wondered if you can ever really go home again. Searching for Terry Punchout is a vivid portrait of small-town hockey life, of fathers and sons, of feeling left behind and leaving things behind, of clinging to glory and grasping for meaning. With this strong debut, Hellard makes sense of what home really means, and in doing so reveals how close we actually are to the people and places that can often feel so far away.”—Stacey May Fowles, author of Baseball Life Advice

“Searching for Terry Punchout does just what its title promises – packs a punch. Readers will be knocked out by Hellard’s dry and bittersweet humour as protagonist Adam attempts to navigate a return to the ‘charming’ small-town and father he bid adios to years ago. Hilarious and heartbreaking – an excellent debut novel.” —Theanna Bischoff, author of Cleavage, Swallow, and the forthcoming Left

“Funny, quirky, sad, and sweet. Searching for Terry Punchout is a story of friendship and family, of hockey heroes and small-town hangovers, of Zamboni lessons, and thrift store beauty queens. Highly recommended!” —Will Ferguson, author of The Shoe on the Roof   

“It doesn’t take much to get me to read a novel featuring hockey and a guy named Terry, but Tyler Hellard’s stellar debut hit me like an errant stick to the head. A big story set in a small town, by turns funny and sad, moving and melancholy, Searching for Terry Punchout stays with you long after the final buzzer. Masterful.”—Terry Fallis, two-time winner of the Stephen Leacock Medal for Humour

“Tyler Hellard’s Searching for Terry Punchout is utterly complete and heartbreakingly authentic. If all the rinks in small-town Canada and the game of hockey itself were to suddenly disappear from the earth they could be reconstructed from the blueprint that is this excellent novel. And if you know the game at all at its grassroots, you’ll recognize characters from these pages and never look at them the same way again.”—Gare Joyce, author of The Code, The Black Ace and Every Spring a Parade

“Searching for Terry Punchout does just what its title promises – packs a punch. Readers will be knocked out by Hellard’s dry and bittersweet humour as protagonist Adam attempts to navigate a return to the ‘charming’ small-town and father he bid adios to years ago. Hilarious and heartbreaking – an excellent debut novel.”—Theanna Bischoff, author of Cleavage, Swallow, and the forthcoming Left

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