Damage Done by the Storm
Short Stories (2004)
Jack Hodgins

"'Balance' is told by an orthotics sculptor, a young man who may seem unexceptional --until we find that he has fallen in love with the plaster feet of one of his distant patients. 'Galleries' has a Faulkner scholar and her photographer son touring Mississippi and nudging against touchy issues of race. Race also plays a role in 'Over Here,' a story told by a ten-year-old farm boy who tries to keep the secret that the girl next door is "an Indian." In 'The Drover's Wife,' the lady in question is a logging boss so fierce that when she hits an opponent in a bar 'his front teeth dropped, one after another, tinkling, into several peoples' drinks.' An elderly couple feature in the longest story , 'Inheritance' where a distant uncles bequest proves to be a mixed blessing. 'Astonishing the blind' has a Canadian pianist in Germany writing home to congratulate her parents on their wedding anniversary, only to reveal much more than she intended. The geographic range of these stories is wide, but home base is the Vancouver Island logging and farming communities that feature in Spit Delaney's Island and other books by Jack Hodgins."

Damage Done by the Storm is now available in trade paperback (Emblem, McClelland & Stewart)

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