Dexter Cooke: a child of privilege, loved by his parents, adored by his peers, could have been a star. Instead, by his mid-thirties he's mired in mediocrity — a guilt-ridden son and uninspired teacher who's trapped in a lacklustre marriage haunted by three miscarriages. He's jolted out of his torpor by his student Susan Slater who experiences a sequence of paranormal visitations from a man named Gabriel at the Dancing Grasses conservancy. Could this be the same Gabriel, the charismatic shaman, whose spell Dexter fell under at seventeen? Why is he reappearing at Dancing Grasses, and why has he led Dexter and Susan to a corpse?

Des Kennedy is a novelist, essayist and veteran back-to-the-lander. The author of nine previous books, in both fiction and non-fiction, he has been three times nominated for the Stephen Leacock Memorial Medal for Humour. He’s contributed many articles on environmental issues, gardening and rural living to a wide variety of publications in Canada and the United States, and has been featured on numerous regional and national television and radio programs. A celebrated speaker, known for his passion and irreverent wit, he’s performed at conferences, schools, festivals, botanical gardens, art galleries, garden shows and wilderness gatherings. Active for many years in environmental and social justice issues, he was an organizer of the successful civil disobedience campaign in Strathcona Provincial Park in 1988 and was recognized as a key supporter in the struggle to save Clayoquot Sound. In the ’70s and early ’80s, he lived and worked with two First Nations bands attempting to defend their traditional territories in north-central B.C. against industrial clear-cutting. In the ’90s he was a founding director of a successful community land trust on Denman Island. Des and his partner Sandy live a conserver lifestyle in their hand-built house surrounded by gardens and woodlands.

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