Spit Delaney's Island is Vancouver Island, and its settings - the lush green forests, the pulp mills, the all-encompassing sea, and the ferries crossing to the mainland - permeate this stunning collection of short fiction. Opening and closing with stories about Spit Delaney himself, the operator of Old Number One steam locomotive in the local mill, the volume travels between the harsh world of its people's reality and the comforts of their fantasies.

Humane and compassionate, Spit Delaney's Island, the first collection of fiction from Jack Hodgins, established him as a writer of extraordinary imagination and dazzling humour.