The Lost Salt Gift of Blood: New and Selected Stories - Softcover

These 11 haunting short fictions are shaped by the rugged terrain and rough seas of Cape Breton Island in southeastern Canada. MacLeod, a notable Canadian writer making his American debut here, is a superb storyteller who captures the moodiness of his native Nova Scotia in tales of fishermen, farmers and lighthouse keepers. Like the variable geography and climate of Cape Breton, the stories are raw and brutal, sweet and tender. In "The Boat," an academic recalls the life and death of his stubborn father, a crusty old lobsterman with a passion for literature"useless books" to his wife. Despite aspirations of university, the son pledged to "remain with him his father as long as he lived and we would fish the sea together." After the father's drowning, the son left Cape Breton and his widowed mother to pursue a degree. Years later, he observed: "It is not an easy thing to know that your mother looks upon the sea with love and on you with bitterness because the one has been so constant and the other so untrue." Set in a remote and isolated environment, the regional work speaks of great loves (between man and woman, father and son, boy and dog) and tragic losses that will move readers in every corner of the world.
Copyright 1988 Reed Business Information, Inc.

This collection of 11 stories, set for the most part in Cape Breton, Nova Scotia, uses detailed description of the stark, beautiful landscape and the lives of fishermen, farmers, miners, and lighthouse keepers to convey a powerful range of feelings. A Canadian writer not well known in the United States, MacLeod draws on childhood memories and on folktales of Ireland and Scotland, often writing in the first person and using Gaelic quotations to enhance the melancholy moods. A special blending of myth and reality here preserves impressions from a time and place that will never exist again. A worthy addition to any fiction collection. Dean Willms, Vail P.L., Col.
Copyright 1988 Reed Business Information, Inc.