Late Nights on Air: A Novel

Its 1975 when beautiful Dido Paris arrives at the radio station in Yellowknife, a frontier town in the Canadian north. She disarms hard-bitten broadcaster Harry Boyd and electrifies the station, setting into motion rivalries both professional and sexual.

As the drama at the station unfolds, a proposed gas pipeline threatens to rip open the land and inspires many people to find their voices for the first time.This is the moment before television conquers the norths attention, when the fate of the Arctic hangs in the balance.

After the snow melts, members of the radio station take a long canoe trip into the Barrens, a mysterious landscape of lingering ice and infinite light that exposes them to all the dangers of the ever-changing air.

Spare, witty, and dynamically charged, this compelling tale embodies the power of a place and of the human voice to generate love and haunt the memory.


Elizabeth Hay has created her own niche in Canadian fiction by fastening her intelligence on the real stuff the bumps and glories in love, kinship, friendship.
Toronto Star

Exquisite.Hay creates enormous spaces with few words, and makes the reader party to the journey, listening, marvelling.
Globe and Mail

Paperback: 384 pages
Publisher: Counterpoint; First Trade Paper Edition edition (May 1, 2009)
ISBN-10: 1582434808
ISBN-13: 978-1582434803