A master of magic realism Jack Hodgins has set his novels in rural Vancouver Island and thus raised this place to mythic levels. This collection of essays celebrates Hodgins achievements as he celebrates the seven sisters of the Barclay family. The contributors include Ron Hatch, Linda Morra, Joel Martineau, Jeanne Delbaere, J.R. (Tim) Struthers, Elizabeth Galway, Duffy Roberts, Travis Mason, and Waldemar Zacharasiewicz. As the editor Annika Hannan includes her critical introduction, an essay, Hodgins' biography and a very useful bibliography.
The most revealing part of the book is the interview with Tim Struthers in which Hodgins, like a magician who is bound by oath to protect his tricks, lets the interviewer answer most of his own questions about how he draws supernatural narratives out of a familiar landscape. Struthers' innocent caveat, "Possibly the most important lesson I have learned from writers ... is how art resists, redefines, transcends the terms that critics apply in studying it," transforms his worldly speculation into non sequitur. Perhaps that is why the man on the cover is laughing.