A father and son sail to Canada on the open Pacific, encountering an array of odd individuals along the way. From seafarers to landlubbers, blue collar to middle class – young and old, gay and straight, Asian and Caucasian – all are observed in this saga stretching from San Francisco to Vancouver, from academe to the downtown streets. To Each an Albatross reveals David Watmough to be a master craftsman at the pinnacle of his form. Reminiscent of Lowry’s Ultramarine or the best of Conrad, the novel is set in the mid-Twentieth Century, though the themes are universal and vitally immediate as the present moment. Stirring, evocative, and rendered in deepest poetry, To Each an Albatross is permeated with the fragile beauty of a coastal world it both celebrates and mourns, a delicate novel of love, longing, compassion and subtle desire.

David Watmough is the author of a cycle of fictions that features gay "everyman" Davey Bryant, who has appeared in twelve volumes, including No More into the Garden (1978), Unruly Skeletons (1982), The Year of Fears (1987), The Time of Kingfishers (1994), and Hunting With Diana (1996). Watmough is also a playwright, short-story writer, critic, broadcaster, and the author of nine other books. His novel Thy Mother's Glass (1992) was nominated in 2002 for CBC's Canada Reads. He lives in Vancouver.

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