Jack Hodgins’s acclaimed short story collection immerses us into the lives of characters at once larger than life and intimately familiar. In the title story, a retired Senator fights his way through a major Ottawa snowstorm to keep a family promise. An orthotics sculptor falls in love with the plaster feet of one of his distant patients. On a tour of Mississippi, a Faulkner scholar and her photographer son nudge against touchy issues of race. A ten year-old farm boy tries to keep a secret about the girl next door. An elderly Vancouver Island couple learns that their distant uncle plans to leave everything to them, in what proves to be a mixed blessing. A Canadian pianist in Germany writes home to congratulate her parents on their wedding anniversary, only to reveal much more than she intended about two marriages — and links between some of the stories.

With settings ranging from Australia, Germany, Ottawa, Mississippi, and the Vancouver Island logging and farming communities that have featured so prominently in his books, Damage Done by the Storm is vintage Jack Hodgins, at his highly crafted best.

• book
• 2004
• 0 Fans