While most business aviation executives might do some work on long-haul international flights, they’re more apt to sleep or watch movies. But Nick Houseman, co-owner and board member of Elit’Avia and founder of Zenith Jet, used what would normally be some downtime to write his first novel.
Titled “Old Country Wounds” and available on Amazon, the work draws from Houseman's personal experience of leaving his home country of Scotland for Canada as a young adult. “But that’s where the similarities end—the rest of the book is pure fiction,” he said.
His book follows a man who leaves working-class Scotland in 1960 to build a new life in Canada, where he amasses a fortune in the Alberta oil business. Caught between his homeland and his adopted country, he struggles with family tragedies back home. He then uncovers a “dark secret” that leads him to mastermind a vendetta against a family he blames for his own family’s hardship.
“A theme that I wanted to explore in the book is probably quite common to many immigrants. It has to do with letting go of the past,” Houseman said. “At what point do you cease to be from the old country and truly identify with your new country? I’ve wrestled with that question for years, and I’m sure I’m not alone.”
