As the novel opens, he is wandering along the back roads of eastern Ontario, contemplating the flora, the history of trains in the region, and decades past.

After a fleeting first romance he meets his future wife Edie, who disappoints her family by converting to Catholicism to marry him.

The young couple spends time in her hometown of Stoverville (a fictionalized version of Brockville), where her parents have a boathouse on the Saint Lawrence River.

Writing in the Vancouver Sun, Alan Dawe positively reviewed it, saying that he "can contemplate with pleasure to the prospect of reading this novel again and again.

"[1] David Helwig of the Toronto Star wrote that it is "humane, often charming, sometimes witty, lovingly detailed and full of a real generosity of spirit" but was "slacker in texture than its predecessor.