Against the Wind

In this dramatic debut novel about relationships, six individuals’ complicated lives are intertwined after a chance reunion.

A successful environmental lawyer is forced to take himself to task when he realizes that everything about his work has betrayed his core beliefs. A high school English teacher asks her former high school love to take up her environmental cause. A transgender adolescent male raised by his grandparents struggles to excel in a world hostile to his kind. A French-Canadian political science professor finds himself left with a choice between his cherished separatist cause and his marriage and family. An accomplished engineer is chronically unable to impress his more accomplished father sufficiently to be named head of the international wind technology company his father founded. The Quebec separatist party’s Minister of Natural Resources, a divorcée, finds herself caught between her French-Canadian lover and an unexpected English-Canadian suitor.

Praise for Against the Wind

“An intricate and elegantly compelling novel, notable for both its political and personal acuity. Jim Tilley writes with deep feeling for his characters and great command of his fascinating materials.”—Peter Ho Davies, author of The Fortunes

“The writing is brilliant and economical, especially about the environment, and there’s all sorts of information here for the taking, but essentially this is a novel of character. And a very good one.” —Library Journal

“Tilley handles decades-long character arcs with empathy, resulting in a resonant and humanistic novel.” —Kirkus Reviews