Percival Leary was one of the hockey greats. Once hailed as King of the Ice, he is now tucked away in a small-town nursing home, sharing a room with the cantankerous and alcoholic reporter who chronicled his career.
Tracked down by a young advertising executive, King Leary is invited to Toronto to record a ginger ale commercial alongside the newest NHL hockey sensation.

Leary travels to the big city with his roommate and a slightly off-kilter male nurse, but he is also accompanied by his ghosts: Clay Clinton, his one-time best friend and former hockey manager; Manny Oz, his challenger for the crown; and the hockey-playing monks of Bowmanville Reformatory, where hiss career began.

The trip is a sometimes hilarious, sometimes heart-wrenching odyssey that reveals the truths of his not-always-illustrious life.

Published in 1987, King Leary won the Stephen Leacock Award for Humour and was shortlisted for the Trillium Award. The book has been out of print for some time, and is being republished with a new cover for Canada Reads.