It's been a heck of a year for Angie Abdou. Her first novel, The Bone Cage, was nominated back in February to be part of this year's Canada Reads celebration. Angie and her defender Georges LaRoque weren't able to bring home the top prize, but The Bone Cage was on everyone's lips. This spring, her second novel, The Canterbury Trail, was relased to near-universal acclaim. Now, still riding high from those successes, The Bone Cage has been selected by MacEwan University as their book of the year for 2011-2012.

Each year, MacEwan selects a book of contemporary Canadian fiction for every first-year student to read. What does this mean for The Bone Cage? It means that Digger and Sadie's story of unrelenting ambition and sacrifice on the road to the 2000 Olympic Summer Games in Sydney will be experienced by hundreds of students in the upcoming academic year.

This is the 15th year of MacEwan's Book of the Year literary program. Previous winners include The Golden Mean by Annabel Lyon, Oryx and Crake by Margaret Atwood, and two previous NeWest titles: Chorus of Mushrooms by Hiromi Goto, and Icefields by Thomas Wharton.