Sointula

About this book

Summoned to the deathbed of a long-ago lover Evelyn is overcome by emotion. Off her medications she impulsively steals a kayak and embarks on a quest that takes her deep into the Canadian wilderness in order to find her lost son Tom. On the way to Sointula a remote fishing village off Vancouver Island she gains a traveling companion Peter Gore a writer working on the quintessential book on the region. Stymied by illness writers block and whiskey Peter makes an unlikely and unreliable shipmate and paramour. Tom the survivor of a gunshot wound that slowed his speech and his drug-dealing finds solace in his isolated life collecting data for a whale researcher. As Evelyn and Peter approach Tom waits for the whales irregular visits to the waters edge. Like the novels of David Malouf and Jonathan Raban Sointula is a celebration of place a novel where the landscape comes as fully alive as its memorable characters.