cover image Cape Breton Road

Cape Breton Road

D. R. MacDonald. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt (HMH), $23 (320pp) ISBN 978-0-15-100523-9

Thirteen years after the publication of his 1988 Pushcart Prize-winning short story collection, Eyestone, MacDonald's fiction is still shaped by the rugged landscape of Cape Breton, Nova Scotia. In his debut novel, the drama again unfolds against the unforgiving geography of Canada's East Coast. When his penchant for stealing cars catches up with him in Boston, 20-year-old Canadian Innis Corbett is duly shipped back to Nova Scotia to live with his surly Uncle Starr. His uncle's remote Cape Breton farm is perched on the edge of a small community where everybody knows everyone else's business. Innis, determined to escape, devises a plan to cultivate pot in the attic to fund his next move. Into this unstable household drops Claire, a 40-ish former stewardess fleeing an abusive relationship. As Innis and Claire grow close, Starr's jealousy and suspicions bring tensions between the two men to the boiling point. The story takes several dramatic turns, but more compelling than the plot are the Cape Bretons whom Innis comes to know, a people long on memory and more than a little fey. MacDonald captures their dialect, strength and spirit with powerful clarity. The long gap between the publication of Eyestone and this novel means MacDonald will have to be introduced all over again to most readers, but the novel's terse prose, rich character development and strong themes make it a natural for handselling. (Jan.)