"[A] riveting tale . . . Bowling captures the unrelenting sensory assault of war and industry as they combine in a sort of amoral apotheosis . . . A powerful and emotionally wrenching book."

"Like any general, Bowling is bold at times, but his attacks are on the mark and his theme strikes the heart of the reader."

"The Tinsmith is a provocative, ambitious, exciting story . . . [it] delves with guileless courage into the quagmire of past racial conflict, and will be read and recalled with that admirable quality in mind."

"This vivid and passionate novel opens with the American Civil War, where after the battle of Antietam, we're told that men 'moved among the dead and wounded slowly as wasps over rotted fruit'; it's such writing that makes Tim Bowling's novel memorable—that, and its range, for it ends nineteen years later in western Canada, with two of the major characters. Altogether, a story of impressive scope, and bristling with action."

"The most interesting sections of The Tinsmith, which take place during a turf war among the upstart salmon canneries in frontier-era British Columbia, give the book a heart that's undeniably Canadian . . . there's something wonderful about the way these ruthless cannery owners give a little added mythological heft to Canada's west coast."

"The Tinsmith begins and ends in blood. Between, the harrowing, stunning new novel by Edmonton writer Tim Bowling is a powerful, haunting evocation of friendship and cruelty, of grace and inhumanity, of violence and beauty."

"Tim Bowling's . . . descriptive powers take flight . . . his amazing ability to draw cringe-inducing characters is gripping and memorable."

"An odyssey that spans a continent—from the civil war battlefields, to the British Columbia salmon canneries, The Tinsmith is an ambitious and spellbinding read."