Books: Islanders

When Theo Frith, a teenager growing up on Toronto Island, discovers the body of artist Dan Rainier in the harbour ice, he’s thrust into the center of a drama that will alter the course of his life—and the lives of everyone around him. Dan’s sudden death jolts the close-knit island community, including Theo’s mom, Yvonne, who is struggling to keep her drinking in check, and Dan’s daughter, Maxine, who is left with the senselessness of losing her dad.

Moving through multiple timelines in the late 2000s, Islanders braids Yvonne and Dan’s mid-life reckonings with Theo and Maxine’s coming of age. Years after Dan’s death, the younger pair find themselves far flung, in Whitehorse, where Maxine is stationed as an ER nurse and Theo works on a historical television series about the Klondike. When their paths cross, a tentative love story takes shape. But four thousand kilometres from Toronto Island, they remain haunted by the place they tried to leave behind, with its beaches and lagoons, artists and eccentrics, winter isolation and summer crowds, and by the intimacy of a place where everyone knows everyone else’s business, even when they pretend not to.

Inhabiting the world of Toronto Island in vivid detail, Islanders captures the ache of isolation and belonging amidst the rare backdrop of one of Canada’s most unusual neighbourhoods.