Winner of the Edward Stanford Travel Writing Awards 2018
'an absorbing and composed tale, providing the perfect escapism.' - Buzz Magazine
'lean, lyrical...beautifully nuanced and utterly touching' - Claire Allfree (Daily Mail)
'taut, powerfully understated...rich with raw emotion.' - Kieron Smith (New Welsh Review)
'a triumph of compression...just perfect...this novel has scarcely any faults' - Nigel Jarrett (Wales Arts Review)
“What you could change and alter could never be finished or complete or dead. This is what I had been told back then, and what I had tried very hard to believe in since.”
Beside a lake in the northern Canadian wilderness, fifteen-year-old Zachary Tayler lives a lonely and isolated life with his father. His only neighbours are a leech trapper, an eccentric millionaire, and an expert in snow. But then one summer the enigmatic and shape-shifting Eva Spiller arrives in search of the remains of her parents and together they embark on a strange and disconcerting journey of discovery. Nothing at Sitting Down Lake is quite as it seems. The forest hides ruins and mysteries; the past can never be fully understood. And as Zach and Eva make their way through this haunted landscape, they move ever closer towards an acceptance of what in the end is lost and what can truly be found.
In his fourth novel, award-winning author Tristan Hughes returns to the landscape of his youth in this vivid and poetic coming-of-age story about death, life, and the changes they bring. Set against the harsh, unforgiving beauty of the forests of northern Ontario, Hummingbird unravels a moving tale of loss, absence and redemption.
Tristan Hughes was born in northern Ontario and brought up on the Welsh island of Ynys Mon. He is the author of three other novels, Eye Lake, Revenant, and Send My Cold Bones Home, as well as a collection of short stories, The Tower. He is a winner of the Rhys Davies Short Story Prize and is currently a senior lecturer in Creative Writing at Cardiff University.