Here is the sad and frantic comedy of a man who comes to his last stop in a cabin at the edge of the New Brunswick forest after trying to outrun his own tale. Victim of mishaps, mayham, compulsive slander in his native Wales, Anthony Watkins sees himself as guardian of truth — most notably the truth about himself. But he cannot call his life his own when it is rewritten by the fictions of a hanged man and a team of Welsh conspirators, led by Morgan U. Price, ageless village elder, assisted by Watkins's parents, his own worthy spouse, his cousin's beautiful and fertile wife, Dr. Daniel Morgan, that disgrace to Medicine, and the massed choristers of Glantawe, where all truths are possible and most are at least attempted. Yet Watkins, too, is part of what he suffers: fated to delude, invent, re-live his delirium and folly, accept as gospel the story of the hour. What he must endure is less an identity crisis than a carnival of mortal dreams.

Peter Thomas, a devoted fly fisherman, is also the author of three books of poetry. Among his prose works are The Welsher, a novel, and Strangers from a Secret Land, about Welsh settlement in Canada, which won the Welsh Arts Council's annual award for a work of non-fiction, and the Canadian Historical Association Regional History Award. A resident of Fredericton for many years and a former professor of English at the University of New Brunswick, he now lives in St. Andrews, New Brunswick.

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