A powerful first novel about a family that slips from fortune's favor and a town broken by the forces of modernity. Across a bend of Ontario's Attawan River lies the Island, a working-class neighborhood of whitewashed houses and vine-freighted fences, black willows and decaying sheds. Here, for generations, the Walkers have lived among the other mill workers. The family's troubles begin in the summer of 1965, when a union organizer comes to town...

A young man from a blue collar family struggles against the odds to fulfill his childhood dream of attending the University of Notre Dame and playing football for the Fighting Irish.