Longlisted for the Man Booker PrizeA Finalist for the 2003 Giller PrizeAcross a bend of Ontario''s Attawan River lies the Island, where, for generations, the Walkers have lived among other mill workers. But in the summer of 1965, with the threat of mill closures looming, the Walkers grapple with their personal crises, just as the rest of the town fights to protect its way of life. Superbly crafted and deeply moving, this book is at once a love letter to a place, a gripping family saga, and testimony to the emergence of an important new novelist.