Martin James has spent forty years perfecting the art of leaving Sri Lanka behind. A successful realtor in small-town Ontario, he has built a new family, a comfortable life, and a careful distance from the country that shaped and scarred him. But when his daughter's wedding brings him back to Colombo in April 2019, he finds a place caught between its old wounds and new ones - the civil war over, but the hatreds merely rearranged.
When the Easter Sunday bombings shatter everything he came to celebrate, Martin is left with two urns, a grief he cannot metabolize, and a conscience he cannot quiet. Back in Canada, his business collapses around him. In Sri Lanka, the son of his closest friend is disappearing into radicalization. And a powerful politician with blood on his hands is about to become president.
Martin knows he should stay home. He has always been better at surviving than at saving anyone.
He goes back anyway.
When Sirens Beckon is a rich, morally urgent novel about the price of belonging - to a country, a family, and an idea of who you might have been. Set against the real events of the 2019 Sri Lankan Easter bombings, it asks whether a man who spent a lifetime running from his past can find redemption by running toward someone else's future.
