Hugh Garner was a hard-drinking, opinionated tough guy who fought with editors, publishers and everyone else he considered part of the Establishment. Yet beneath this brash, angry exterior, Garner was a writer of sensitive short stories and a novel, Cabbagetown, that has become a Canadian classic.

Garner's stories were drawn from his own rough, adventurous life, a life portrayed in all its wildness and pathos in The Storms Below. From an impoverished childhood in Toronto's working-class Cabbagetown to his time riding the rails in the Depression, from the Spanish Civil War to the Royal Canadian Navy, from youthful radicalism to cantankerous, middle-aged conservatism, Paul Stuewe chronicles the many passages of Garner's controversial career.

A definitive biography of a unique Canadian writer, drawing on extensive interviews with Garner's family, friends and colleagues, The Storms Below has the excitement and emotional impact of a good novel.

Paul Stuewe is the author of The Storms Below: The Turbulent Life and Times of Hugh Garner, which was shortlisted for the City of Toronto Book Award in 1988, and Hugh Garner and His Works (1986). Currently, he is an associate professor of English at Green Mountain College in Vermont.

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