Paul Quarrington’s lovely and amazing ninth novel is about a motley group of hurricane chasers who encounter the Force Five disturbance of their dreams. In that sense, this novel is the tale of an oddball quest for salvation, a sort of Moby Dick-of-the-isobars. Galveston isn’t highfaluting: it tells a story, and it knows how to get laughs. But this compact, enchanting book succeeds on another, more profound, level – its mission is to remind us of the unseen currents in life, and the ways in which people’s fates can be affected by a change in the wind.

As Galveston begins, Hurricane Claire is hundreds of miles offshore, hurling itself toward the tiny Caribbean island of Dampier Cay. Five unhappy characters – one American, two Canadians, and two international beach bunnies – are on their way to the next hot spot in cyclone-spotting, setting off the first butterfly-like ripple that will change their lives. They are “weather weenies,” people who travel the world seeking extreme weather conditions as a kind of psychological cure-all (a whirlwind is a place where problems are blown away). Jimmy Newton is Mr. Weather, the maladjusted, too-talkative tech wizard. Caldwell – we never learn his first name – is a screwed-up, small-town Ontario teacher who betrayed his family and won the lottery on the same day. Sorrowful, drifting Beverley has endured a perfect storm of bad luck and hard times. Gail and Sorvig are ditzy singles with no real direction in life. All of these people converge on Dampier Cay, where three of the locals are experiencing bumpy weather of their own: Polly, a woman who works at the local inn; Lester, the local fixer and amateur preacher; and Maywell Hope, a descendant of pirates and cursed with a similar restlessness.

Inevitably, two sets of pressure systems converge. The closer the hurricane gets, the more turbulent the characters become. Eventually, the wind sweeps away safety and brings in near-total obliteration. The last 50 pages of Galveston (wherein the book’s title is explained) are a stylistic tour de force; readers will be – yes – blown away. Galveston is a novel of great compassion; Quarrington does a knockout job of conveying to us the importance of every human breath.