At one time or another, most of us dream of running away to join the circus, but few ever pursue the dream. Charles Wilkins, co-author of the best-selling adventure story Paddle to the Amazon, is one who has. The Circus at the Edge of the Earth is his compelling account of travelling one bitterly cold, wet spring with the spring with the Great Wallenda Circus through the dense boreal forest of Northern Ontario and the plains of Manitoba to The Pas, Thompson, and Flin Flon, far in the north.

"Oh, Flim Flam is legendary with us, " Pat enthused. "Occasionally you'll hear old circus guys swapping lies about all the remote places they've been. Some guy'll have been to Bora Bora, some guy'll have been to some crazy little hillbilly town in Tennessee, another guy'll have taken a boat to Bimini with two elephants and an llama. But the guy who's been to Flin Flon, Manitoba, trumps everybody; he's been somewhere, because in the old days Flin Flon was the end of the highway, the end of civilization. Clyde Beatty once told me that the only things beyond Flin Flon were savages and the edge of the earth."

Wilkins returned from the tour -- his fascination for the circus intact and his admiration for its people deeper than ever -- to give us this unsentimental, affectionate, and dramatic account of a dangerous and enchanting world.