When an unknown woman steps off a beached Peruvian freighter and walks into the Vancouver Island town of Port Annie, nothing can ever be quite the same. Stalwart citizens, tired of their milltown routine, grasp at a fresh subject for gossip. Others are suddenly prepared to make momentous decisions. But eccentric old Joseph Bourne, who knows that the endless rain is going to bring a landslide down on the town, is certain that the mysterious woman has come looking for him.

Jack Hodgins’ comic masterpiece is filled with social satire, and it is also filled with love, which permits this ordinary town to recollect the past with affection, and to begin its history again.

First published in 1979, The Resurrection of Joseph Bourne won the Governor General’s Award for Fiction.