"At the heart of Sointula is Evelyn, the mayor's wife in a mid-size southern Ontario city. Unexpectedly summoned to British Columbia to attend to the deathbed of her long-ago first lover, Claude, Evelyn succumbs to a cascade of grief--over Claude, and over her estranged son with Claude, Tom. Impulsively, she throws away the trappings of her privileged life: her anti-depressent pills and her airplane ticket home, her wallet and most of the clothes off her back, she embarks on a quest that takes her deep into the West Coast wildeness. The goal: to find Tom--her strange, damaged son--in the emote fishing village of Sointula." --Back cover.