“In a field of strong women writers, Gayla Reid stands out for her stunningly beautiful language and her ability to depict place — Canada, Australia, Vietnam — as a state of mind, an evocation of a particular character’s relationship to land, people and time.  Her fiction combines the poetry of language and observation with the force of highly-accomplished and compelling narrative.”
— 2005 Marian Engel Award Jury (Elisabeth Harvor, Antanas Sileika, Dianne Warren)