Hugh Hood is recognized as one of Canada's most versatile, sophisticated, and aesthetically selfconscious fiction writers. His short stories, sketches, and novels demonstrate an encyclopedic knowledge of social structure, architecture, music, painting, philosophy, and Catholic religious doctrine. Hood's realistic method, which synthesizes documentary reportage and interpretive observation, often masks his preoccupation with finding revelatory, sacred qualities in the daily and mundane. It is Hood's combination of realism and allegory that makes his writing so effective.

The religious aspects of Hood's writing are in many ways the product of his intensely Roman Catholic upbringing. He was born in Toronto on 30 April 1928. By his own account, he was raised on an "exclusive diet of Christian narrative and apologetic" which "encouraged a lively, fascinated interest in wonderful stories and acute but simply expressed perceptions of divinity." Hood attended Catholic schools in Toronto, read widely in religious literature, and was deeply influenced...