Endgame of a Sparrow

A life lived for the past. A spirit with no future. A sacrifice that defies time itself.Owen Ho is learning to live with silence. Recently widowed, his days are a quiet loop of grief, his only solace the weekly Xianqi games at his local Calgary chess club. His world is one of carefully managed endings.Yuen is a scholar from the Tang Dynasty, a tutor to the Imperial Prince, whose world ends in a flash of geomantic energy. He awakens over a thousand years in the future, a disoriented spirit in the basement of a museum, his brilliant mind and ancient manners utterly lost in the roaring heart of modern Chinatown.Drawn by the familiar sight of a Xianqi board, Yuen challenges a kindly old man to a game—and wins with a skill that seems impossible. Seeing a lost, brilliant boy with nowhere to go, Owen does something impulsive: he takes him home.What begins as a strange companionship blossoms into a profound father-son bond. Owen finds new purpose in teaching Yuen about the modern world, while Yuen's ancient wisdom brings a forgotten light into Owen's life. But Yuen carries a terrifying secret: he is not truly alive, and as the energy that sustains him fades, he begins to literally disappear.Their desperate search for an answer leads them to a devastating ancient text and a single, horrifying solution: for a spirit to become real, a real life must be willingly given.Faced with an impossible choice, Owen must decide what he is willing to sacrifice for the son he never expected to find—and Yuen must learn what it truly means to live.The Endgame of a Sparrow is a breathtaking novel of love, loss, and the beautiful, heartbreaking choices that define a lifetime.