Set on an island in BC's Salish Sea, a richly imagined and often hilarious collection of linked stories by Bill Gaston, a master of the art of short fiction.

Eleven stories unfold over a period of ten years, featuring a cast of characters striving to understand and overcome pasts that often include a catastrophic error: on Tunnel Island, moral misjudgements, semi-legal schemes, and antisocial gaffes abound.

Jack ekes out a living doing odd jobs and minding the beautiful houses of absentee landlords, until he takes a lover's bad advice and rents them out on Airbnb. A dying woman retains her wry sense of Wiccan humour while lovingly ministered to by her partner -- in between his trips to hand out Halloween candy to the goblins at their door. A gruff-bordering-on-abusive uncle persuades his nephew to help him catch the otter hunting his koi. The almost mystical disappearance of a toddler is revisited years later when her parents remarry in a surreal outdoor ceremony.

These salty islanders are loners -- not always by choice -- though sometimes their disconnectedness is alleviated by a wedding or a Christmas dinner or a night at the pub. Highly original and empathetic, Tunnel Island is electrified by dark undercurrents that jolt and illuminate by turns. Bill Gaston's big-hearted vision of life on a heavily forested island off the BC coast immerses readers in a world rendered tender and tolerable by human folly and our stumbling attempts at redemption.

Bill Gaston grew up in Winnipeg, Toronto, and North Vancouver. After spending a dozen years in the Maritimes, he moved to Victoria in 1998 to teach writing at the University of Victoria. He has published a collection of poetry, several plays, three story collections, and three novels, with a fourth, The Good Body, due to appear in spring 2000. "Where It Comes From, Where It Goes" won the 1998 CBC/Saturday Night Canadian Literary Award for fiction and was published in Saturday Night in May 1999.

Bill Gaston's profile page

"The immense pleasure that Tunnel Island gave me came from every possible source: from the lovingly described settings, the unexpected narrative turns, the supple sentences, the close observations? What a talent Bill Gaston is! What a master of the craft!" -- Barbara Gowdy, author of Little Sister and The White Bone

Past Praise: "Gaston is that rare writer who can peel back the deepest fears of Nature (abandonment, pain, futility) and find a vision of vehement, imperfect beauty." -- Publishers Weekly

"Bill Gaston's stories are as multifaceted and generous as the complicated, all-too-real characters at their heart. This is a wonderful book. Spend some time on Tunnel Island, and you'll never want to leave." -- Steven Price, author of Lampedusa and By Gaslight