Sigmund Brouwer is a busy man, a very busy man. In between writing 24 young-adult, children’s, and adult books and inking a new deal with Word Publishing for adult fiction, he also fits in a large commitment to literacy in the young. “Literacy is so important,” the 36-year-old Red Deer native says in a break in a reading conference. “I’ve been working with the schools for four years now, and hopefully it does some good. It doesn’t hurt, and it’s good for me anyway.”


Brouwer’s family-values fiction is something of a legend. His books have sold more than 500,000 copies, but he’s the first to admit that writing does not come easily. “I’d always wanted to write, but it took seven years and thousands, literally, of unpublished pages before my first short story was accepted. I was too stupid to quit. I enjoy the planning and research of books too. The actual writing of them is just hard work.”

But the work has paid off. His first book in The Accidental Detective series, Lost Beneath Manhattan, was published in 1990, and is now in its fourth printing. The 12 titles in the young-adult series have sold more than 200,000 copies, and have been translated into German. Another series, Winds of Light, set in medieval England and based on the fictional discovery of the lost books of Marco Polo, published by Illinois-based Victor Books (carried in Canada by Beacon Distributing), has sold about 2,000 copies in Canada. Brouwer has also written a series of hockey books, and this fall has a new adult fiction title, Double Helix, the first book of a five-year commitment to Word Publishing of Texas.

It’s been a long, varied journey for Brouwer, who took seven years to complete his undergraduate Commerce degree from Michigan’s Calvin College, and who has earned his keep as both truckdriver and butcher. After graduating from the journalism program at Carleton University, Brouwer began his writing career in Florida as editor of National Racquetball, and in 1985, had his first story published in Western Producer. Contract offers from two Christian book publishers followed not long after.

Although Word is known as a Christian publisher, Brouwer is leery of being tagged as a “Christian” writer. “Word is looking to publish crossover material, and that is where I come in. I think of myself as a writer of stories. My job is to write a story as well as possible. What I believe, my own belief system, will show up in the fabric.” Brouwer adds that Word issues a broad range of fiction and is the 10th largest publisher in the U.S. And although he readily admits his writing is of the sort that is acceptable to a family-based readership, he rejects any overtly evangelical approach. “If beliefs are artificially injected into writing it becomes a polemic, not a story. I am really suspicious of any writing that has an agenda. I do see, however, that there is a real demand for fiction that parents want to give their kids. In my hockey books, for example, I want to write good mysteries in the world of hockey. But the main character also has to find out the hard way that there is more to life than hockey. I think there is always room for books that don’t have excessive violence, sex, or bad language and my books try to fit into that.” He pauses before adding, “Dick Francis, one of my absolute favourite writers, writes successful and popular books that have very little in the way of sex or violence, or even bad language.”

Brouwer is clearly comfortable with the role of spearhead for Word into the crossover market, helping the publisher reach audiences outside its traditional Christian base. Double Helix, for example, asks the question of just how far humanity should go in playing God in light of the recent rapid advances in genetic technology. It’s an exciting adventure story, but at its heart lies the deeper question of humanity’s power and responsibility. “I basically ask the question, ‘Do we have a soul?’” says Brouwer, “but I don’t answer it. That’s up to the reader.” The book grew from an article about genetics research in The Economist, and despite the label “family-value writing” being, to use Brouwer’s word, “boring,” the book is already about to reprint after an initial run of 45,000.

Brouwer’s hectic writing pace shows no signs of letting up: he plans to write one adult novel and as many as four children’s and young-adult books a year. Some of the young-adult books will fall into the category of high interest/low vocabulary. “They are all about what I call the MTV sports: skydiving, mountain biking, and so on. The idea is to get to kids who aren’t currently drawn to reading. Grab them in their interests and language.”

Brouwer visits dozens of schools, delivering the message that reading and writing go hand in hand, and that practice and persistence pay off, to as many as 10,000 students annually. He has described his school visits as a reward for writing and particularly enjoys working with students in the lower grades, when a love for reading can “more easily be fostered.”
The school visits also help sell books, of course, if not at the time of the reading, then later. They also help promote Brouwer where Word would like to see him gain a higher profile: in the secular market. “They are marketing me as a writer, not as a Christian … First and foremost as I try to tell a story. Double Helix, for example, is a very plot-driven book; it’s darker than anything else I’ve done, and has four or five different points of view and there is more character depth, but it is still a plot-driven novel.”

Brouwer concludes, “I am not a ‘literary writer.’ I write stories. But I do want to learn more as I write, so that the characters are as strong as the plots. And I hope that people can realize that reading can be fun.”