Touched by Fortune’s Shadow: a triptych
​
by Quinn Tyler Jackson
Foreword by Dania Sheldon, DPhil
Knight Terra Press
littera manet sed lector oraculum
​
est. 1995
Vancouver, 1998. From his mountain-view Coal Harbor penthouse, Brett Lloyd-Ronan leads a quiet, highly ordered life as co-founder and chief analyst of a thriving quantitative analysis firm. Born into a blue-collar world where opportunity rarely came knocking, he has made patterns and predictability his twin anchors while using his distinctive intellect and skills to navigate the chaotic seas of trading, portfolio hedging, and market modeling.
​
But when the woman he has loved from afar over many years reappears and sails into his sheltered cove, Brett finds that his days will never again begin the same way twice. And the patterns become even more elaborately unpredictable as a retired concert pianist challenges Brett to make abstractions real, and to speak and act when silence and caution may feel safer.
​
Touched by Fortune’s Shadow: a triptych is a work of tranquil turmoil. While Brett has found sanctuary and wealth in the fiscal world of risk and margin, at life’s heart remain human relationships in which interests and emotions sometimes align, sometimes collide, and never conform to logic. Will Brett, like the Huma bird of legend, remain perpetually in auspicious flight? Or is there a place of truth where he can land and be his fully authentic self?
“The sheer brilliance and sprezzatura of Jackson’s ideas, and his ability to articulate these in fluid, gorgeous, and startlingly original prose and poetry, will capture and hold your attention.”
​
—Dania Sheldon, trilogy editor
Born and raised in Western Canada, Jackson grew up as a child in logging camps, where radio plays and reading were his only forms of entertainment. Upon his return to the city, he felt the call to write fiction, and approached art with a passion and fury. Rather than jump directly into authorhood, he first edited, and then promoted others’ writing as a literary agent. Eventually, he moved forward into his own art, and his first three novels were published in the United Kingdom between 2000 and 2002.
​
He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts in 2006. He is a member of the Writers’ Union of Canada.
​
Jackson lives in Western Canada, where he continues to write fiction and work in scientific research.
