When you live with fictional characters for a long time, they can become as real as the people around you. That's the case with Thomas and Louise Brossard, the main characters in my novel The Violets of Usambara. Thomas was a Quebec politician, a Red Tory, who was booted out of office in 1993. Once one of Brian Mulroney's right hand men, he fell out of grace in large part because he was honest--or more honest than the people around him. This meant that after the PC's defeat, he didn't have a golden parachute waiting for him, and was at loose ends. Louise got him named to a fact-finding mission in Burundi in 1997, which is when the novel begins...
I've been thinking of Thomas a lot these last few days as Mulroney testifies about whether or not he did anything wrong in accepting a wad of cash from Karlheinz Schreiber. His answers are wonders of evasion. Thomas was right to hang back at the end when obviously a lot of people were looking out for number one. Too bad he hasn't lived as well as Mulroney has since.
And what was his fate, exactly? Well, you'll just have to read the book to find out.
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