The Storms Below

Book excerpt: Hugh Garner was a hard-drinking, opinionated tough guy who fought with editors, publishers and everyone else he considered part of the Establishment. Yet beneath this brash, angry exterior, Garner was a writer of sensitive short stories and a novel, Cabbagetown, that has become a Canadian classic. Garner's stories were drawn from his own rough, adventurous life, a life portrayed in all its wildness and pathos in The Storms Below. From an impoverished childhood in Toronto's working-class Cabbagetown to his time riding the rails in the Depression, from the Spanish Civil War to the Royal Canadian Navy, from youthful radicalism to cantakerous, middle-aged conservatism, Paul Stuewe chronicles the many passages of Garner's controversial career. A definitive biography of a unique Canadian writer, drawing on extensive interviews with Garner's family, friends and colleagues, The Storms Below has the excitement and emotional impacy of a good novel.