Raised by his father in the dying town of Paradise Flats, Jack McGreary has learned to live by his wits. The year is 1939. Drought has turned America’s heartland into a dust bowl, and the world is on the brink of war.

Jack's father wants him to head north to Canada to sign up in the fight against fascism. But when a pair of fast-talking swindlers named Virgil and Miss Rose blows through town, Jack falls in with them instead.

Together, they go on a crime spree across the Southwest, staging a series of inventive and often hilarious cons, while sexual tension between Jack and Miss Rose grows… Someone is being set up.

"Spanish Fly will be in high demand because of Ferguson’s name, but it should be in high demand because of his talent. Nuanced and enthralling, Spanish Fly is undoubtedly the best writing he has ever done, and it is no mere placebo effect. It’s genuine medicine for the Canadian fiction scene."
—Quill & Quire

"Ferguson has written history and humour side by side many times, and this is the first time he has fused them together so successfully."
— New Brunswick Telegraph Journal

"Ferguson aficionados will find in it [Spanish Fly] echoes and allusions to Happiness^TM...an eminently readable novel...Like Robertson Davies, Will Ferguson has the gift of linkage, of letting unlikely novelistic strands interleave and thicken into a significant braid."
—Globe and Mail

"[Will Ferguson is] excelling at something new. His novel Spanish Fly is a remarkable work, steeped in history and arcane knowledge but rooted in the intimate timelessness of the human heart and soul. There are a few laughs, but this is a serious, and ultimately heart-rending, story... Spanish Fly is the real thing. It's a novel of heart and soul, wise and occasionally clever and -- dare I say it? -- mature... it will undoubtedly draw him new admirers."
—Robert Wiersema, Vancouver Sun

Will Ferguson Pulls a Fast One in 'Spanish Fly'—CTV.ca