Henighan made waves with his critique that Canadian novels fail to engage with the urban present - here is his engagement with the urban novel. Set in the Montreal neighbourhoods of Notre-Dame-De-Grace and the Plateau Mont-Royal in the 1980s, The Streets of Winter plumbs the instability/fluidity of personal identity in modern urban life. Scrupulously plotted, rich in cultural detail and alive with Montreal's many voices and accents, The Streets of Winter is an absorbing novel about life in modern urban Canada.