He said slowly, "You know how sometimes something happens, and afterwards you think what you could have - should have - done, if only you had the nerve and the confidence to do it, but of course by the time you think that, it's too late." Isolde nodded. Wenden mumbled, "Only, like, all the time." "Well - it's like having the nerve and the confidence to do it straight off, at the moment you need to do it," said Ridge. Life changes quickly from carefree, innocent fun to desperate survival when teen friends Ridge, Isolde and Wenden inadvertently transgress their city state's strict rules of...

Robert Rayner's latest novel based in New Brunswick shows how the encroachment of age in a rural community's life exposes it to the perils of progress. White Rock Island, an isolated rural community, becomes a defiant island of souls intent on preserving itself when it is threatened by economic decisions of the provincial and federal government which tax it but threaten to withhold services that would sustain the community. When a bigger, stronger entity threatens a much smaller one, the outcome seems easy to predict. But no man is an island. For with age, nearly every community changes. But...