The Whirlpool

A literary romance, with a rich cast of characters, set on the Canadian side of Niagara Falls in the summer of 1889.

In her stunning debut novel, renowned Canadian novelist Jane Urquhart staked her claim as a major storyteller of her generation. It is the summer at Niagara Falls and the undertaker’s wife is busy, for this is the season of crazy stunts and frequent accidents. Across the street, in Kirk’s Hotel, Fleda McDougal lives and breathes to the sonorous rhythms of Robert Browning’s poetry. Her emotionally distant husband, Major David McDougal, is a military historian, who only comes to life when arguing that Canada, and not the United States, really won the War of 1812.

And it is in this place, beside the Niagara whirlpool, in a glade below the falls, that Fleda first encounters the chronically ill clerk and would-be poet, Patrick–the man destined to change her life.

The New York Times wrote, A strange and sensual first novel… Miss Urquhart is a special writer, worth watching on both sides of Niagara Falls. This is for any lover of Victorian-era fiction.