A young man returns to the town of his youth after a period spent on the road.

Unable to rekindle a high school flame, Cal Bedrick, who is Jewish, soon meets a very nice Catholic girl, Frannie Sinkiewicz, who falls hard for the troubled young man. Their courtship leads quickly to a marriage that fills their acquaintances with doubts.

The young couple's story is set against the backdrop of a fictionalized Wausau, Wisconsin, when the Vietnam war is drawing to an end. Duck Island is peopled by a cast of small-town archetypes: Frannie's conservative family including her brother / patriarch, Joey, manager of the town's convenience store where Cal gets a job; Father Leszinski, the parish priest; Mr. Dula, who manages the men's shelter where Cal washes up; Frannie's best friend Wendy Gabrilska, and an assortment of war veterans, Indigenous people, immigrants, the town's merchants, and local low-lifes who populate Wausau.

Like a David Lynch film, Duck Island vividly contrasts a society whose liberal surface conceals a troubled soul, which is revealed as the novel's events unfold.

Sweet England is Steve Weiner's third novel. His debut in 1993, The Museum of Love, was a Giller Prize finalist, and was published in the UK, Japan, France and Belgium as well as in North America. His second novel, The Yellow Sailor, wass published in 2001.

Weiner's books have been compared to the novels of Céline and Burroughs, and the films of Lynch and Cronenberg. He lives in Vancouver.

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