Toby: A Man won the Georges Bugnet Award for best Alberta novel.
Television presenter and man-about-town Toby Marshall thinks he has it all. But in the days after his father has a startling accident, Toby makes a series of very bad decisions that throw his life into disarray. Jobless, friendless, and suddenly single, Toby does the worst thing a man of his generation can do: he moves into the basement of his parents’ suburban bungalow.
Toby feels he has hit rock bottom. But his father’s increasingly erratic behaviour, funny and terrifying at once, signals more profound challenges. Toby’s chance encounter with an unstable young francophone mother who abandons her two-year-old son to Toby’s care brings actual responsibility for the first time. Soon he is dealing with death, diapers and, ultimately, true love. Toby at last begins to climb out of the hole that is his life -- muddy, broke, bruised, heartbroken -- but finally, a man.