Set within the harsh and insular milieu of contemporary urban Canada, these four novellas approach timeless themes of adolescence, parenthood and belonging from a unique and challenging perspective. Responsible, perceptive Will Bolton finds himself caught between the chaos of his dysfunctional family and the security offered at the home of an English teacher ...a young woman struggles to exorcise the deathly legacy of her mother, a serial killer ...and the visit of a distant cousin wreaks havoc in the delicately balanced existence of Tom, an epileptic high-school student. These evocative and subtle studies dramatise not so much the loss, as the disturbing absence of innocence in the tortuous passage towards adulthood, where family contact is at once both agonisingly distant and violently close at hand. In beautiful prose of deceptive simplicity and searing invention, TRAPLINES marks the emergence of a writer certain to assume a place alongside Carol Shields and Alice Munro in the vanguard of Canada's literary talent.