This unusual novel renders point of view, chronology, and setting with a fluidity that may disorient some readers but certainly will intrigue many others. The story begins in Toronto in 1954. After Hurricane Hazel batters the city, Ray Townes, a police officer, is hailed as a hero for his bravery in rescuing citizens from certain death. But his wife, Mary, a nurse, treats a young woman whose story casts Ray's actions in a new and frightening light. Fifty years later (the novel's present day is 2004), Ray, now a shell of a man, stricken with end-stage emphysema, tears apart his own tapestry of lies to reveal the truth of what happened on that day. At the same time, his wife, now a bitter and loveless woman, has her own story to tell-a story about a man who suddenly, half a century ago, became a different person in her eyes. Both narrators, Ray and Mary, speak directly to the reader, taking us back and forth between 1954 and the novel's present, telling their stories in alternating chapters and leaving it to the reader to piece together the events of that day in 1954. A cleverly constructed and evocatively written novel.- David Pitt