Welcome to Crooked River, Ontario. Population 2,851 and falling. Eli has lived in Crooked River his whole life, and he knows better than anyone about that sinking number. His father, uncle and grandmother are dead; he didn't know his mother, and his grandfather Clarence, an eccentric builder of hotels and a now-underwater castle, walked to the river one day and never returned. Eli's childhood friend, George, also went missing, back when they were kids, and was never seen again. Eli has spent years wondering about both Clarence and George. Now the river, its course diverted years earlier to make way for a mine, is reclaiming its original path, and the lake is receding day by day. As the waters retreat, secrets come to light, and it seems as though Eli might finally learn what happened to his grandfather and best friend. Then a young boy disappears, pulling Eli's past into the present. Told in taut, spare prose, Eye Lake is the haunting story of three families, three generations and three disappearances.

Tristan Hughes was born in Atikokan, Ontario, and brought up on the Welsh island of Ynys Mon. He has a PhD in literature from King’s College, Cambridge and has taught courses on American literature and creative writing at Cambridge, Leipzig, Bangor and Cardiff. He won the Rhys Davies Short Story Award in 2002 and wrote his first novel, The Tower (2004), while spending seven months in a body cast after breaking his back falling off the walls of a castle. Soon after he published Send My Cold Bones Home (2006) and Revenant (2008), all set on Ynys Mon and highly praised in the UK. His most recent novels Eye Lake (2011) and its follow-up, Hummingbird, are set in the northern Ontario town of Crooked River, based on Atikokan, where Hughes spent his childhood summers. Tristan Hughes is a senior lecturer and an AHRC Fellow in Creative Writing at Cardiff University who splits his time between Cardiff and Atikokan.

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‘Hughes displays a pitch-perfect ear for the language, cadence and foibles of life in an isolated rural community. He gives us pickup trucks and fishing holes, petty feuds that go back years, and a deep sense that nothing and everything important happens in the town ... A deeply satisfying read.’ — Quill & Quire