Heron River - Hugh Cook

Heron River is a deeply moving exploration of human error and redemption, tragedy and triumph, set in the supposed safety of a small Ontario town. The novel poignantly confronts the necessary possibilities for human forgiveness and love amidst adversity.

The threads of the characters’ lives are intricately interwoven: a woman with a gradually debilitating illness seeks solace from the pain of the past and the challenges of the present; her adult son, damaged from a tragic childhood accident, finds security in his routine existence, until he falls prey to a cunning deception; a gifted teen-aged boy harbours a dark secret that he must confront in order to be whole; a young female police officer tries to solve a puzzling string of break-ins following the murder of an elderly woman, and the previously staid small town reacts anxiously to the fact of a killer in their midst.

Heron River probes the fierce bonds of family, the tragic consequences of human failure, and the persistent reverberations of history and memory.

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Hugh Cook was born in The Hague and immigrated to Canada with his family when he was seven. He holds an M.F.A. in fiction writing from the Writers’ Workshop at the University of Iowa and has published stories in a number of Canada’s leading literary journals. His previous books are Cracked Wheat and Other Stories, The Homecoming Man, and Home In Alfalfa, which won the City of Hamilton Book Awards for fiction and has been adapted for the stage. He and his wife reside in Hamilton, Ontario.