Malcolm Lowry often doused his talent in alcohol, was haunted by coincidence, worshipped some unsavoury heroes, turned himself inside out so that his gentleness splintered into violence, and, above all, lived forever in fear that he might be found out. Lowry is hounded--a college friend dies, a manuscript is stolen, a home is burned down, a marriage disintegrates unfathomably--and he always flees. His bewitching letters entrance first one wife, then another; but rarely does stability last. In and out he goes--of bars, of countries, of clinics, of jail--eventually achieving some kind of respite in Dollarton, British Columbia, where he manages to carve out of his curious experience in Mexico his magnificent novel Under the Volcano. Gordon Bowker's great achievement is to set before us Lowry's epic, frustrating story, its contradictions and comedies intact, without distortion or embellishment: friends, relatives, wives and doctors, archives, letters and travel have helped to pain an unblinking portrait of the man and the writer.