Falsework

On June 17, 1958, Vancouver's Second Narrows Bridge collapsed while under construction, Eighteen men plunged to their deaths. On the cusp of the 50th anniversary of the disaster, critically acclaimed poet Gary Geddes provides an intimate portrait of the many lives affected by the toppling of that seemingly indomitable structure. Pairing his polyphonal narrative with grainy archival photos, Geddes displays a sure-footed authority while balancing the line between documentary and fiction. The Second Narrows collapse was real, and Geddes has a real connection to it: his father, a former navy diver, was called to the bridge to search for bodies in the wreckage. The voices that speak from the page are fiction; at times raw, occasionally profane, they ring with awful truth.