Due out in March with House of Anansi Press, Ottawa writer Chris Jones’s second book, Too Far from Home: A Life and Death in Space, is an account of the experience of two U.S. astronauts and a Russian cosmonaut who were stranded on the International Space Station for several months after the 2003 Columbia space shuttle disaster. But writing about space was new territory for Jones, whose road to a U.S. National Magazine Award and the coveted post of sports columnist for Esquire owes a great deal to his year covering the far less lofty world of boxing.

Former National Post editor Ken Whyte gave Jones his first writing job when the paper launched in 1998. He was part of a group of equally young and inexperienced reporters who came to be known as “Ken’s kids.” Jones was assigned to the sports department, where boxing became his beat, largely because the other sports were being covered by more experienced writers.

An encounter that has stuck in Jones’s mind is one with Trevor Berbick, the former Canadian and world heavyweight boxing champion. In a wildly optimistic moment, after he reclaimed the Canadian title in a 2000 fight, Berbick told Jones of his plans to buy a ranch in Florida for all his fellow Quebeckers to use free of charge. Just days after his victory, though, Berbick’s unexpected return to the sporting spotlight, including Jones’s story in the National Post, reminded law enforcement that the boxer, with his criminal past, was not in the country legally. Two years later, he was deported to the U.S. and was eventually sent to Jamaica, where he was found dead last October. “That moment that seemed so hopeful was the beginning of the end,” Jones says. The troubled Berbick became a key figure in Jones’s first book, Falling Hard, which follows the reporter’s time covering boxing for the Post.

Jones pitched the idea for that project to then-Anansi publisher Martha Sharpe. He says Sharpe told him that if he wrote it, she would read it, but there was no advance. The entire publishing experience was not enjoyable: not long after the book came out, Anansi’s parent company, Stoddart Publishing, went bankrupt. And six years after Falling Hard’s publication, Jones is his own worst critic: “The worst thing I ever did was read Hemingway when I was writing that book. Halfway through the book, the sentences get shorter.”

But the effort wasn’t for nothing. On a trip to New York in the summer of 2001 to cover the Blue Jays for the Post, he went to the offices of Esquire and tried to get an unsolicited audience with the magazine’s editor, David Granger. Just when it looked like it wasn’t going to happen, a janitor – in a Breakfast Club-like twist, as Jones puts it – took an interest in the young sportswriter lurking in the lobby. The janitor told him he should try to meet with Andy Ward, the editor who worked with Charlie Pierce, Esquire’s revered sports columnist. Jones called Ward from the lobby, and Ward asked him to come back in 45 minutes. Jones did, with two boxes of donuts – one for Ward and one for the janitor. He also left Ward a copy of Falling Hard, which he suspects helped get him the job as Pierce’s replacement later that summer.

Jones is still the sports columnist for Esquire. But beginning with “Home,” the National Magazine Award-winning piece that turned into Too Far from Home, he has begun to do more non-sports pieces. The story of the astronauts stranded in the International Space Station was one that he suggested and developed himself. “I was excited about the story from the start.” Jones says.

In the Esquire piece, Jones does a remarkable job of conveying what life on the cramped vessel must have been like. He gives credit for that to the co-operation of the two American astronauts, Donald Pettit and Kenneth Bowersox. When it came time to expand the piece into a book, Bowersox declined to participate, but Jones says Pettit has been a champion of the project from the start. Plus, Pettit took nearly 25,000 pictures and many more hours of videotape that helped Jones with his descriptions of the space station. While the setting for the book is certainly extraordinary, Jones says the psychological predicament of the astronauts, who had lost friends in the Columbia explosion and who couldn’t return to their families for months longer than expected, is surprisingly universal. “You can relate to the basic emotions of loss and loneliness,” Jones says.

The story struck a chord with readers very early on. Bill Thomas, the publisher at Doubleday U.S., acquired the rights to the book before the Esquire article had even been published. Anansi publisher Lynn Henry, who admits to not generally being a fan of stories about space travel, says she was quite taken by the book. “When I started reading the manuscript, I left behind any lingering question mark I might have had,” she says.

Jones says he can’t wait for Too Far from Home to come out. “It’s like this great birthing moment.” And he is already looking ahead to his next story. He recently wrote an Esquire cover story on Arizona Senator John McCain, which could lead to a series of profiles of the likely 2008 presidential candidates, and he adds that he’s also in the running to do a book on McCain’s probable campaign. There is also talk of a movie deal for Too Far from Home, and Jones would like to work on the screenplay. “It’s a really exciting time,” he says.

Then, thinking back to Berbick’s shining moment, he adds with a laugh, “Or maybe it’s the beginning of the end.”