It's like watching an afternoon rain in the mountains through a big picture window. A beautiful view grows gray, then frighteningly dark, but as the rain clears the air and allows rays of sunshine through the shrinking clouds, the view becomes luminous, vivid, sharply defined. An occasional droplet captures and lenses the whole world in a tiny space for a moment, then slips away. Afterward, the world appears renewed.

The book is fantastically good. The interweaving of the historical and contemporary settings, the poignant but not pointed-at contrasts and similarities providing a richness for the careful reader, even as the adventures and the personal hopes of all the characters keep the pace engaging. There are sentences worth reading aloud for poetic quality, characterizations as real as life, and whimsies woven tightly with despairs. Above all, the narratives capture something lacking in so much fiction: the understanding that joy and pain are inextricable.Conscience and volition are here too, rising now in one character and falling in another, points between which to navigate like Scylla and Charybdis, so lifelike. And this author doesn't settle for the popular endings of the day (cliffhanger, everybody changes and goes away, guy/girl gets guy/girl, saccharine moral) - he convincingly portrays people at the brink of decision, stronger than they were, ready to live. It's so good to read a book that ends on a note of genuine hope. ( )

There are two parallel stories told in this book. One is of a winter Samuel de Champlain and his compatriots spent in the Annapolis Valley in Nova Scotia, battling sickness and scurvy, based on some journals they kept at the time. The other is a modern story of Andy in Prince Rupert, and his thoughts and worries about his high school sweetheart returning to Prince Rupert after 20 years, to care for her mother who has Alzheimers. Andy's life captivated me completely - I was not as keen on the historical story, but it is a story Andy was reading during his boring shifts of work, and forms the basis for an unusual New Year's Eve party he decides to throw. This is an excellent and unusual book, as was the other book of Bill Gaston's which I loved, Sointula. ( )