Surfacing soon:

'Incendiary' info about songbird Sarah McLachlan -- courtesy of author's hush-hush X files

by Peter Clough, Province, Sunday, August 10

Now we see why Sarah McLachlan and her management are so uptight about the publication of a tell-all biography due to be released this fall.

The book, "Building a Mystery: The Story of Sarah McLachlan and Lilith Fair," will hit stores Oct. 15 -- and it's one of the worst-kept secrets in Vancouver that the singer and her manager Terry McBride are more than a little anxious about what it might contain.

"There are things in the book that they don't want known," author Judith Fitzgerald told me this week when I tracked her down at a cottage "somewhere in the middle of nowhere" in Ontario.

"I don't think this is the best way for this information to come out," Fitzgerald says. "This knowledge is not secret. I'm not the first person to have heard it -- but I'm the only one who tracked it down."

Fitzgerald, well known in Toronto literary circles as a music journalist, book critic, author and poet, won't be pinned down about the potentially controversial aspects of her book, but she did throw out a weird and tantalizing clue about a mysterious final chapter. She says the chapter concerns "a very significant" person in McLachlan's life. As part of her book deal, the identity can't be revealed before publication.

"X is the last source in the world and the one you'd least expect," Fitzgerald says, not helping any. "There's nothing libelous in the chapter -- but it is incendiary."

Incendiary! Well, X had better come through, then -- or I for one will be seeking a refund.