Shattered

To earn the community service hours his social studies course requires, fifteen-year-old Ian signs up for a placement at a place called The Club, which he assumes will be easy. It turns out to be a soup kitchen in a rough neighbourhood, and on his way there he is nearly mugged. A homeless man wielding a length of pipe drives off the attackers. Ian expects the job to be grim and frightening, and he is right about that. Later, the same man, now called Sarge, appears at the soup kitchen looking much less threatening, and Ian slowly gets to know him. Sarge's real name is Jacques, a former Canadian Armed Forces soldier whose final posting was as a peacekeeper in Rwanda, a country Ian knows almost nothing about. As Jacques shares his past, Ian comes to understand Rwanda and a wider world he had never considered. He must decide what he can do with that knowledge, and whether he can help a man who has nothing left but painful memories. The book includes a foreword by General Roméo Dallaire, who commanded the United Nations Mission to Rwanda.