Posted: May 15, 2026
On May 23, John Van Rys (PhD’91) will publish his debut novel Milksop with Chicken House Press, just one month after he turns 65. Milksop is a coming-of-age story largely in the comic mode. At one and the same time, it’s a tale of unrequited love and the story of how Evan Mulder meets the woman who will eventually become his wife. In June 1979, Evan is dumped in a farm laneway in Huron County, Ontario. A normally studious, math-loving 17-year-old, he has unexpectedly dropped out of school. The result? His family have sent him for work therapy to a dairy farm north of London where he lives with his intense Dutch-immigrant parents and overachieving siblings, Jeff and Annalise.
Jeff, whose nickname for Evan is “Milksop,” has conspired with their father to land Evan at Niall and Connie Logan’s farm in hopes that eight weeks of country living and manual labour will fix him. If it doesn’t, he’s finished with school and condemned to begin the night shift at Cameron Confectionaries, where his dad is a salesman. Will country living and hard work transform Evan from an indecisive, cowardly milksop — or show him there are worse things to be? And will the mystery of why he self-destructed at school be solved?
To learn more about John and Milksop, visit his author website at johnvanrys.com or follow his Substack, ODD (Old Dog Dumps): Dispatches from a Journeyman Writer at johnvanrys.substack.com.
