I Saw Three Ships: West End Stories

By Bill Richardson

Eight linked stories, all set around Christmas time in Vancouver's West End neighbourhood, explore the seasonal tug-of-war between expectation and disappointment.  These tales give shelter to characters from various walks of life whose experience of transcendence leaves them more alienated than consoled.

I Saw Three Ships captures a West End community vanishing under pressure from development and skyrocketing real-estate prices.  As arch as they are elegiac, as funny as they are melancholy, these stories honour a cherished period in the history of the West End.  Sometimes twisted, sometimes tender, I Saw Three Ships will speak to all who have ever been stuck spinning their wheels at the corner of Heathen and Holy.