I write literary fiction about the human cost of difficult choices. My stories explore how people carry love, fear, loyalty and trauma with them when circumstances push them into worlds they never expected to enter.
A Medicine Game is fundamentally a coming-of-age story about two Canadian soldiers and the psychological cost of preparing for a war that, for years, never comes.
The story begins in 1982, when two young men meet at Royal Roads Military College. Over the next decade, they grow from inexperienced cadets into professional soldiers, building their identities around duty, friendship, masculinity, ambition and the expectation that they will eventually have to fight.
Then, in 1992, they are sent to Sarajevo as UN peacekeepers.
What they encounter there is very different from the conventional war they had imagined. They find themselves in the middle of a brutal, genocidal conflict where the rules are ambiguous, their ability to act is constrained, and the distinction between helping people and simply witnessing their suffering becomes increasingly difficult.
But the novel isn’t really a military adventure. The war is the crucible; the human relationships are the story.
Jason Donville is a Toronto-based filmmaker, entrepreneur and former Canadian naval officer. His professional life has taken him into very different worlds—from the military to business and the arts—and those experiences have shaped his interest in people, institutions and the choices we make when circumstances become difficult.
A Medicine Game will be released September 12, 2026. Published by North Vanguard Press.
Coming Soon from Jason Donville
A Medicine Game is the story of two young Canadian soldiers who spend ten years preparing for war, only to discover in Sarajevo that the battles that matter most are the ones they have been carrying inside themselves all along.
A Medicine Game follows two young soldiers who meet at Royal Roads Military College in 1982 and spend the next decade preparing for war. When their careers take them to Sarajevo in 1992, they encounter the brutal reality of ethnic conflict and carry its wounds home with them. Years later, both must confront the trauma they have buried and discover that surviving a war is not the same as healing from it.
At its heart, A Medicine Game is a story about friendship, idealism, family, resilience, and the difficult path toward healing.